¹ James Raine (ed.) 1838, Miscellanea biographica: Oswinus, rex Northumbriae; Cuthbertus, episcopus Lindisfarnensis; Eata, episcopus Haugustaldensis, London: J.B. Nichols and Son.

Here begins the prologue to the life of the most holy and most glorious King Oswin of Deira, and how he was crowned with martyrdom under King Oswy.

² The carelessness of the ancients often compels the diligence of modern men to fall short in many endeavours. For antiquity has frequently been more negligent than it should have been in writing down and committing to memory the praiseworthy deeds of brave men — and most of all those whose life flourished with the virtue of the Christian faith and whose death was eminent in charity. So it is that, seeing or hearing the miracles of certain saints, we rejoice in their holiness; yet concerning their life, since we hold nothing or little written, we have nothing to say that may profit posterity. Perhaps someone will ask: what is the point of this beginning? I answer thus. My own devotion compels me — or rather the persistent pleading of the brethren in asking drives me — to commit the life and martyrdom of the holy king and martyr Oswin to writing; but I am not permitted in this matter either to satisfy my own devotion or to obey the charity of the brethren, for concerning his life and death, both of which were precious in the sight of the Lord, I find little in the annals of the ancients. For the Venerable Bede, touching briefly on the life and death of Saint Oswin in his History of the English, declared neither his life as it deserved nor his death as it deserved; yet he did make known, briefly but fittingly, that each was adorned with the glory of innocence. The things indeed which others have said or written about so great a martyr, we permit to be believed, but by their authority we are not compelled to believe. And this is the reason why I am hindered from completing the task in full, though I am driven to complete it in some fashion by the brethren who ask so opportunely. I confess indeed that it is presumption to re-weave what the Venerable Bede has woven; and I reckon it the mark of an apocryphal work to weave into a historical narrative, as though resting on truth, what is not found in Bede and yet is heard everywhere. Therefore, whether I do not know how to write without sinning or whether I cannot, still, choosing what is less dangerous, I keep to Bede’s footsteps and resolve to recount more broadly, as far as the modesty of my ability allows, the merits of the saint which he touched upon — yet interspersing a few things taken from the histories of others which come nearer to credibility. Here ends the prologue.

Chapter One: How the blessed Oswin, sprung from royal ancestors, went honourably into exile with his people after his father’s death, and after ten years became hereditary king of Deira at the will of that people. #

¹ The glorious man beloved of God, the venerable Oswin, born of illustrious stock, was the son of Osric, king of Deira. He was a kinsman of Edwin, the most renowned king of the Northumbrians, and surpassing the nobility of his father’s line in probity of character, he cultivated the faith of Christ from boyhood with a good disposition — a faith from which his father, after receiving the sacrament of baptism, apostatised and strayed. For when the same Edwin, king of the Northumbrians, had been removed from this world, two kings succeeded him: one was Osric, son of his uncle Ælfric; the other, called Eanfrith, was the son of Æthelfrith who had reigned before Edwin. These divided the people of the Northumbrians into two provinces, as they had been of old: Osric, the brother of the blessed Oswin, and Eanfrith claimed for themselves the government of Deira and of Bernicia respectively, as though by right of succession. And as it were out of the fatness of their iniquity it came forth that, having grown rich, they cast off the faith of Christ which they had received while poor; and the Lord stirred up His rod of wrath, Cædwalla king of the Britons, and by that minister struck the apostate kings even to destruction. And the kinsfolk and supporters of the blessed Oswin took him away, because he was under age — for the weakness of his years and slenderness of means did not permit him to avenge his father’s death — and they lived in exile with him among the West Saxons for ten years. Now Cædwalla, although he had been imbued with the sacraments of Christ, yet, corrupted in morals and ungrateful for Christ’s grace, began to lay waste the people and province of the Northumbrians subdued by arms; and he did not exercise the equity of law among them, but strove to destroy them by extermination. Yet he usurped the king’s dominion over the wretched people for one year only, and in that dominion did nothing worthy of praise. And the Lord, pitying in His mercy the misery of the wretched people, raised up Saint Oswald, the brother of Eanfrith, begotten of Accha the sister of the same King Edwin; and He appointed that man of surpassing piety and religion to meet Cædwalla, not with force and arms only, but with the charity of compassion and the pious purpose of succouring the oppressed. Saint Oswald therefore, armed with the brotherly love which knows not how to be conquered, met the same Cædwalla in the place called Deniseburn; and when the Lord had delivered into his hands the persecutor of the Christian faith and the ravager of believing peoples, he struck him with the edge of the sword. And not only as his brother Eanfrith’s successor over Bernicia, but as succeeding, so to speak, his uncle Edwin who had died intestate, he ruled for nine years over both peoples of the Northumbrians, reducing them into one, with the utmost equity. At last, when ten years had passed after the death of the apostate kings — that is, Osric and Eanfrith — Saint Oswald was exposed to peril by Penda the pagan king of the Mercians in the place called Maserfelth, and by the judgement of the sword was translated to the heavenly kingdom; and his bastard brother Oswy succeeded him in the kingdom, then in his thirtieth year, and held the kingdom he received most laboriously for twenty-eight years. Now in the time when Cædwalla was devastating with tyrannical slaughter, and when Saint Oswald was governing with royal equity both the Deiran and the Bernician peoples, Saint Oswin, living in exile, cultivated in his youth the piety of the Christian religion and adorned his noble birth with all nobility of character. For he was strenuous in virtue, old in mind, humble in speech and sublime in wisdom — which the constant devotion of his devout heart revered; and, as it is said, consecrating to the Lord within his soul the integrity of both mind and body, he showed himself a second Joseph among the citizens of Egypt, both comely in appearance and chaste. And watching for a fitting time to return to his fatherland, after the ten years spent in exile, he heard that King Oswald had been taken from the world by the sword’s edge and that his brother Oswy had been raised to the kingdom in his place; and taking counsel with his people, he returned to the province of Deira and was there received by all with the greatest honour. And after a short space of time the princes and chief men of that realm came together and, having taken counsel with one accord, raised the blessed Oswin, by hereditary right of succession, to be lord of the Deirans in kingship, and clothed him in royal purple. Now Saint Oswin, as the Venerable Bede the priest relates, was both comely in appearance and tall in stature, and pleasant in speech and courteous in manners, and generous with his hand to all, noble and common alike. For he was most devout and conspicuous for every sweetness, and so stood between rich and poor that the poor looked on him as their equal while the rich esteemed him a wealthy man above them. Whole in body, excellent in mind, great in counsel, holy in deed. So it came about that for the royal dignity of his mind, his face and his merits he was loved by all, and from every side men even of the highest nobility flocked to his service from distant provinces; and himself a most devout cultivator of religion, he presided over the province of Deira for seven years in the greatest abundance of all things, beloved of all. Nor did the abundance of earthly things, as is usual, allure his mind when drawn away; for not setting his heart on the riches that flowed in, he always sought their use and not luxury in them. And while he ruled the subject peoples with the governance of just law, he strove with all solicitude to be himself ruled and instructed by the law of the Lord. For abounding in earthly things to his desire, yet not setting his heart on them, he measured himself when raised to the kingdom by the same rule of humility as he had been used to using when banished in exile; and ever mindful that his natural condition was like other men’s though his royal degree was unlike, he showed himself in his rule a man to good and modest men, but a king to the fierce and untamed: by humility he went before the modest, and by severity he bore down the fierce; and he girded himself to every pursuit of spiritual exercise, but poured himself out the more diligently in works of mercy. O man full of piety, worthy of the diadem! At that time the most blessed Bishop Aidan ruled the province of the Northumbrians with pastoral care — a Scot by race, a Catholic in faith, whom Saint King Oswald had raised to the bishopric, and by whose preaching he had converted no small people to the faith of Christ by divine grace. It was the office of this most holy man, by custom, not only to teach the people committed to him in church, but also, on account of the tenderness of the new-born faith, to go round the province entering the houses of the faithful and sowing the seeds of the divine word close at hand in the field of each one’s heart, according to their capacity. This man of such great solicitude for the flock committed to him was therefore accustomed to come often to Saint Oswin, king of the Deirans, for the fragrance of his religion, and to remain with him; and he always admonished him, persevering in good deeds, to advance to better things and to the heights of further perfection; and, taught by the Holy Spirit, he foretold that he would pass by martyrdom to the heavenly kingdom. Indeed the king, receiving him as a holy man, heard him diligently preaching the words of life; and as one devoutly subject to a most beloved father, he strove to correct even deeds ill done whenever he was rebuked at the bidding of his mouth. And the bishop delighted exceedingly in the king’s humility and obedience, and often spoke familiarly with him of the contempt of the world, of the sweetness of the heavenly life and of the glory of the saints. And the king, by no means a forgetful hearer of the word of God but a diligent doer, according to what he had learned from the good master, bearing the care of all with fatherly love, kindly received the poor and especially pilgrims; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and cheerfully bestowing his benefits on all who asked. And so great a league of mutual charity was made between them that the king held the holy bishop as an angel of God and obeyed his admonitions as though they were commandments from heaven; while the bishop loved the king as a portion of his own soul — now rebuking him as a son if he exceeded in worldly things, as is usual, and now cherishing and kindling him with the sweetness of discourse as a companion lifted up in spiritual things.

Chapter Two: How the holy king, rebuked by Saint Aidan the bishop and keeping his word in his heart, lay in a spirit of humility at his feet on the ground, that he might merit pardon. #

¹ For the king had formed his life with all honour of virtues, and humility — which is usually rare among the poor and to be found not at all among the rich — had sanctified for itself a dwelling in the innermost chamber of the royal mind. But since humility is known to be the mother and foundation of all virtues, it must be told of what sort was the humility of this man who is said to have possessed so many virtues in himself. For he who gathers virtues without humility carries them like dust into the wind. Of this man’s humility, therefore, among the other glories of his virtue and modesty and, so to speak, his special blessing, it is reported that it was the greatest — as one example will suffice to prove. Saint King Oswin, says the Venerable Bede the priest, had given Bishop Aidan an excellent horse, on which he — though he was used to going on foot — could cross the streams of rivers or complete his journey if any necessity pressed. When, a little time after, a certain poor man met him asking alms, the bishop leapt down and ordered the horse, just as it was in all its royal trappings, to be given to the poor man. For he was very merciful, a lover of the poor and as it were a father of the wretched. When this was reported to the king, he said to the bishop, as they happened one day to be going in to dinner: “Why did you wish, my lord bishop, to give the royal horse — which you ought to have had for your own — to a poor man? Did we not have many horses of less value, or other things which would have sufficed for gifts to the poor, though you had not given him the one I chose specially for you to keep?” To whom the bishop at once said: “What are you saying, king? Is that son of a mare dearer to you than a son of God?” At these words they went in to dinner, and the bishop sat down in his place. But the king had come from hunting and began to warm himself at the fire with his attendants; and suddenly, while warming himself, remembering the word the bishop had spoken to him, he ungirded his sword and gave it to an attendant and, hastening forward, fell at the bishop’s feet, asking that he would be appeased toward him, “for never,” he said, “again will I speak of this or judge what or how much of our money you bestow on the sons of God.” Seeing this, the bishop was greatly alarmed, and rising at once lifted him up, promising that he was well appeased toward him, if only he would sit down at the feast and put away sadness; and when the king, at the bishop’s command and request, had recovered his cheerfulness, the bishop on the contrary began to grow sorrowful even to the shedding of tears. And when his priest asked him in their native tongue, which the king and his household did not know, why he wept, he said: “I know that the king will not live long; for never before have I seen a humble king. Therefore I perceive that he will soon be snatched from this life, for this people is not worthy to have such a ruler.” Not long after, the bishop’s dire forebodings were fulfilled by the king’s sad death. And certainly, strict equity requires that the lower be willingly subject to the higher power; likewise, the furtherance of fuller justice makes an equal sometimes submit to an equal. But only the furtherance of consummated justice makes a superior bow to an inferior. So the Creator, bowing Himself as the superior to the baptism of the inferior creature, said in awe: “Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness” — thus, namely, humbling Himself before an inferior. The perfection of this righteousness the blessed King Oswin, taught not by the profession of letters but by the anointing of the Spirit Paraclete — forgetting his royal majesty and prostrate at the bishop’s feet — not only held the ferocity of the untamed people over whom he ruled in admiring suspense, but also kindled the fathers of maturer religion by his example to humility. Nor were the bishops of that time like those of today, either insolent with an abundance of riches or pre-eminent over even secular lords in the pompous pride of precious garments; but they were poor in spirit, poor also in means, and therefore easily exposed to contempt — and it was the more virtuous to show them reverence.

Chapter Three: How after many persecutions, when at last in battle he shrank either from shedding the blood of the enemy’s side or from the loss of his own people for an earthly kingdom — that he might gain the heavenly kingdom — he was received in peace into the house of a certain Hunwald, an earl familiar to him, and was betrayed by that same earl to King Oswy and slain, being innocent. #

¹ There are many other examples of the humility in which that soul devoted to God dwelt becomingly and abundantly, but it would take long to enumerate them, and too prolonged a delay in commending it would seem to inflict loss of praise upon his other virtues. For there shone pre-eminently in him, in equal measure, either the largesse of alms, exercising the man’s mercy; or the compassion of succouring the oppressed, displaying his charity; or the sweetness of sparing his subjects, showing forth his piety; or the sharpness of resisting rebels, exercising his freedom. The excellent King Oswin therefore, persisting in vigils, fasts and prayers and adorned with so many and such great prerogatives of virtue, furnished his adversary Oswy of Bernicia with fuel for the envy of his successes. For Oswy grieved that the kingdom which his brother had possessed entire had been divided by the blessed Oswin, and that the kingdom of Deira had been severed from the bounds of his own dominion. For Saint King Oswald, when Cædwalla was slain, summoning the nations of Bernicia and Deira — distinct in peoples and in manners — into one dominion, had made of two one kingdom. For this reason Oswy believed that the rule which Saint King Oswin had received redounded to the injury of his own disinheritance — for he had received it not as successor of Saint Oswald but of his own father King Osric who, as has been said, presided over the kingdom of Deira by hereditary right, but by the deserts of his apostasy had been deprived of kingdom and life together. This cause therefore fostered the beginning of envy and hatred, but no small heap grew from other causes. And the same tyrant Oswy, satisfying the evil of his covetousness, spread snares for the holy King Oswin by cunning machinations, that he might deliver him to death by guile or seized in whatever way, and repair the losses of his kingdom. But Saint Oswin, because he was loved by all — for he was greatly lovable — guarded against the plotter’s deceits: sometimes by the shrewdness of thinking out their malicious thoughts beforehand, sometimes by the grace of forewarning from those privy to Oswy’s own counsel. And it came to pass that the kingdom which he had possessed for seven years with the utmost peace amid the glory of his successes, he held for the two following years less quietly. Nevertheless the reverence for Bishop Aidan, who strove to reconcile peace between the kings, repressed the malice of the king of the Bernicians for seven years, though by no shower of the sacred word could he extinguish it fully. And this was not hidden from the holy King Oswin; therefore he never trusted the peace which King Oswy feigned. Seeing then that he could not circumvent the holy King Oswin’s watchfulness by his dissimulation, King Oswy was grieved and resolved to vomit forth the poison of hatred with which he had purposed secretly to harm the innocent man but had been unable. When therefore he perceived that the dragon’s wiles availed him nothing, he put on the ferocity of the roaring lion; and gathering an infinite multitude of warriors from every quarter, he burned to meet the blessed King Oswin in a strong hand and to destroy him by an impious death. The renowned King Oswin therefore, acceptable to God, knowing that all laws and all rights permit force to be repelled by force, surrounded by the battle-line of his own men, came to meet him at the place called Wilfaresdun. But the most holy King Oswin, seeing his own men unanimously willing not only to strive against the adversaries but even prepared to die for their king, and revolving in his mind the horror of the conflict and that he alone was the cause of the slaughter to be committed on both sides, caring devoutly to spare his own men rather than himself, addressed them thus: “I rejoice indeed, O most faithful princes and most valiant soldiers, in your service and your valour, and I thank your good will toward me. But far be it from me that for my sake alone you should all incur the dangerous hazard of battle — you who made me your king, a poor man and an exile, though lawfully your lord. I choose rather to go into exile as before, anywhere, with few or alone; rather, I prefer to die than that so many and such men should in any way be brought into peril for my sake alone. For he is impious and inhuman who, when he can in no way avert God’s judgement, tries to bring down many for his own cause. Therefore I, peacefully and not by war, gladly embrace the divine sentence upon me — since I know through the mouth of the holy Bishop Aidan that I am to pass by martyrdom to the joys of the heavenly kingdom — and in whatever order and at whatever time Christ shall will, I do not refuse to end this temporal life. For it is written: ‘The Lord has appointed his bounds, which cannot be passed’; and so the poet sings: ‘Each man has his appointed day. No one can bring forward the day of death; it passes and no man withstands it — but on whatever day a man dies, that is said to be his.’” And the army of his most holy king and lord, seeing that his mind could not be recalled from the resolve to be dissolved and to be with Christ, wounded with a deep wound of the heart cast themselves with one accord at his knees and, uttering such words, begged the saint with tears: “O renowned king, O worthy of the kingly name, be gracious now, we pray, to us unworthy. Have you ever found us cowardly or degenerate, or have we appeared anywhere slower in the shock of battle? Without fear we have often pierced the wedges of the enemy. Suffer us therefore to join the conflict of the battle at hand with the foe and to probe with iron the bowels of this perverse age at the sword’s edge; and if perhaps it falls out ill for us in the fight, it is better for us to die in battle than to be sung of in a proverb among the crowd as deserters of our lord. But if you choose to flee, you will be degenerate. If you abandon us, we shall be condemned as for high treason by proscription. Now therefore, since your rewards are safe for you, we ask that in this you take pity on us — do not desert us.” The saint answered: “O most faithful soldiers, I do indeed congratulate your valour — how often I have found you brave in battle and most strenuous — and there is nothing in you of slowness or cowardice that can or should be blamed. But it is not you the enemy pursues; I am the cause of the peril. It is fitting therefore that one man should die for the people rather than that a people of so great a multitude be destroyed for one — especially since I know that a full reward is stored up for me, namely the crown of martyrdom, which the just Judge will render me in the conflict at hand. For since God’s providence cannot be deceived in His disposing, what God has decreed concerning me He deliberates without me. I will in no wise oppose His will, but I long, as He has provided, to pass through martyrdom to the joys of the heavenly kingdom.” Having spoken thus, the most holy king poured forth a prayer of this kind: “Father of the wretched and God of all consolation, whose Son is the angel of great counsel, whose Spirit is the Paraclete in afflictions, grant me in this instant of such great anguish to choose the better way. For if I join in war, I appear guilty before You of shedding blood; if I take to flight, I appear degenerate both to my own dignity and to my parents’ nobility; fleeing, I displease men, and fighting, You.” Confiding these and such-like things to God, at last, the anchor of his counsel fixed in God, the thought entered his mind how he might please God without displeasing men. And he proposed to the chief men first, then to the whole army, that the people should be sent back to their homes and the war suspended for a time, and that he himself would seek some retreat; and he set forth the reason of this counsel, saying: “The adversary seeks me alone to destroy me; if he hears that I have withdrawn from the army, the force of his fury will be checked, and he will not pursue the returning host. But if he learns that I am among the returning men, he will press on more fiercely, and one of two things must of necessity be chosen: either the courage to resist manfully or the degeneracy of turning our backs. We are not accustomed to turn our backs; and therefore I withdraw apart from the army, attended by the faithful Tondhere son of Tylsi, and by night I go to the house of my earl Hunwald, whom I believe loyal to me, for I remember having deserved it of him.” At these words the athlete of Christ sent his army home and withdrew to Gilling with only one soldier dear to him, Tondhere son of Tylsi; and he revisited the house of his earl Hunwald — to whom he had given that same village and many other estates and whom he therefore supposed loyal to him — preferring peace for his people and life, as he had done before, according to the Lord’s word to His disciples: “If they persecute you in one city, flee into another”; as Paul also says: “Give place to wrath.” It therefore stands manifest concerning him that, had he not been willing to die for his people, he would never have dismissed them and gone alone, surrounded by enemies, to the nearby house of his earl Hunwald. Or else, being his own master and free, he would have turned aside elsewhere, had he not preferred through devout charity to die alone for his own like a ram chosen from the flock. The most blessed man therefore resolved thus: by deferring for a little the sentence of death — for which nevertheless he burned with most fervent love — to reach the crown the sooner, his people being set free. And well aware of himself, he entered the house of his betrayer unterrified, with only one soldier; imitating Him who, about to redeem the world, not unwillingly but freely sought the place of His passion. “For he,” says John, “who wills to abide in Christ, ought himself also to walk as He walked.” The happy disciple therefore imitated the happy master, since the master sought the garden where He would be betrayed and the disciple the house where he would die. It is established, then, that he willingly underwent death for his people after the Lord’s example, just as it is clear that the Lord of His own accord went to the place of His passion. But alas, nowhere is loyalty safe! No pestilence is more efficacious for harm than an intimate enemy. Hunwald was the king’s enemy, but it was hidden from the king. And while the king committed his secret to him, he was turning over treachery in his mind. If you ask the cause of his enmity, there is none but pure malice. For the king had never offended him in anything, but, as has been said, had enlarged him with possessions; nor had he deserved his anger from any other quarter save that he had heaped him with honours. Hunwald therefore, as though a son of peace, led the holy king into the innermost chamber of his lodging and, promising him the security of peace, advised him to compose himself for rest. And lest he himself should raise a tumult for the resting man, he withdrew to another room; and as though rejoicing at the unexpected finding of a treasure, he went without delay to the king of the Bernicians and betrayed to him his own lord, the holy King Oswin. O deceit and wickedness! O perfidy of a second Judas! For the devout king confidently entered Hunwald’s house, and the most wicked host handed him over most criminally to his adversary to be slain. What are you doing, Hunwald, malignant traitor? Do you not fear God nor revere men? If God permitted His Son to be betrayed, did the betrayal please Him? Did He not foretell to the one who was to betray Him: “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man shall be betrayed”? Whether you do not heed that which is of hell, or dissemble to heed it, heed at least that in the eyes of men nothing is more abject, nothing more hateful, nothing more criminal than treachery. Treachery is the crime of crimes, the sin of sins; the transgression of law, the confusion of right; the profession of wickedness, the protestation of malice. Treachery, a thing ignorant of grace, destroys the love both of him to whom it is done and of him against whom it is done. But if common treachery is such, what is the betrayal of a lord? If it is the crime of crimes to betray a companion or a neighbour, how great a crime is it to betray one’s lord? Now the enormity of so great a crime exceeds the narrow bounds of speech; now speech cannot set forth what experience knows not. But if you expect profit from betrayal, none appears. For if you betray to grow rich, you are caught in the snare of your own deceit; for the enemy to whom you betray will never heap you with so many honours as the lord you betray has already heaped upon you. If you betray to please, you are deceived; for treachery makes it that you do not please even him whom your treachery pleases. The vice of treachery does not please, nor does the treacherous man please him whom the act of treachery pleases. Nor is there anyone in this matter to whom you do more harm than to yourself — you who by the goad of implanted malice betray innocence and by the short-cut of untimely death hasten for your lord the king the glory of martyrdom, and for us who are bound to his service the gracious presence of his body. Therefore the cruel king of the Bernicians, exulting at the word of treachery and honouring the traitor Hunwald with his lips, in the dead silence of night sent Edelwin, the steward of his house, with an armed band of soldiers, commanding him with imperious insistence, under attestation of the faith owed him, that the most blessed King Oswin be seized and at once pierced through with the sword. Edelwin therefore, entering Hunwald’s house secretly with a strong hand, seized the innocent King Oswin and made known to him the fatal edict of his own lord and king, the impious Oswy. But the precious champion of God, troubled at first by the event of the unexpected mischance, yet at once comforted by the strength of faith and awakened from the trouble, took counsel of virtue in the necessity of imminent death; and changing inevitable necessity into voluntary virtue, fortifying his breast and tongue with the sign of Christ, is said to have given this answer to the executioner sent to him: “The edict of your king hangs on the permission of God my King, and in divine permissions there is nothing unjust or disordered. And therefore, although I am conscious of my innocence and have done nothing — conscience bearing witness, and aware of all consciences…”

Chapter Four: How the body of the most blessed king and martyr Oswin was found on the fifth day before the ides of March. #

¹ In the six hundred and fifty-first year of the Lord’s Incarnation, the glorious king of Deira, Oswin, slain by the sword through treachery, was translated to the heavenly realm, his innocence meriting it. At once, by those whose duty it was, he was carried to the mouth of the river Tyne — a place more frequented by the inhabitants of the region for the security of the impending rock against enemies, but more tenderly loved for the reverence there shown to the glorious Virgin Mary — and was buried there in the oratory of the same Virgin, built on the north side of the river. And because the rude nation of those times and places did not greatly concern itself with the glory of sepulchres, the venerable body, placed in a stone coffin, was hidden away in the secret bosom of the earth. Yet the memory of the illustrious king was held in the highest honour by those among whom the reverence for him living in the flesh and wearing the royal diadem had flourished. For it is familiar and customary that he who was loved while living is loved when dead, and that he who was revered while clothed in the sackcloth of our corruption is venerated while wrapped in the robe of mortality. Moreover the faith of Christ which flourished in the kingdom of Deira while Saint Oswin reigned and Saint Aidan was bishop, with the change of kings and prelates in the course of time withered away. For over that people now faithful, now faithless rulers presided; and according to the ordinances of the rulers, divine worship suffered varied losses in the zeal of the subject peoples. For such a reason the memory of the holy martyr Oswin, grown obsolete and utterly erased, vanished wholly from men’s knowledge; and the earth of the holy body lay for many courses of years buried under a neglected turf, and until the times of Earl Tostig and Ægelwin bishop of Durham it was defrauded of due veneration by the neglect equally of carelessness and of ignorance. Now Tostig was the son of Godwin, earl of Kent, and succeeded Siward as earl of the Northumbrians, not by benefit of inheritance but by the royal gift of the holy King Edward. In this man’s days, therefore, it pleased the divine goodness to bring forth into the light the merit of the holy martyr, hidden so long under the bushel of ignorance, and to set it on the candlestick of the Church’s knowledge. Now there was a certain sacristan of the same church in which the body of the holy king and martyr had been buried, named Edmund — a man religious and God-fearing, distinguished by the monastic life and clothed, as we read, in its habit, devoted to Christ and His holy Mother there day and night. He was not of the body of any monastery nor bound to regular discipline by the title of profession; yet he was, though not by public vow, by voluntary resolve a monk amid the crowds, a solitary amid the throng of people. One night, when after the night vigils he had given his weary limbs to sleep in the church, a man stood by him of vivid colour and inexhaustible vigour, tall in stature and radiant with heavenly light. And Edmund, looking at him attentively, did not presume to ask who he was, on account of the majesty of the angelic face; but the angelic man addressed him thus, saying: “Brother Edmund, Edmund, brother!” To whom Edmund answered with all reverence: “Who are you, lord?” “I am,” he said, “King Oswin, slain by the detestable treachery of my earl Hunwald at King Oswy’s hands, who lie in this church unknown to all. Arise therefore, go and tell Bishop Ægelwin that he should seek the earth of my body in the floor of this oratory; and let him raise it when found and lay it again more fittingly than before in the same oratory. Be present also yourself with the bishop when he seeks.” At these words he disappeared. Edmund therefore, awaking and greatly gladdened by the vision, spent the rest of the night awake in prayer and thanksgiving; and rising at earliest dawn he went hastily to Bishop Ægelwin and related to him the course of the holy vision in order, in sheer truth. And the bishop, hearing the sweetness of so great condescension and drawn to belief the more vehemently by the reporter’s known holiness, exulted with ineffable joy that the reverend holy king and martyr Oswin had deigned to be raised from the tomb by his ministry. But the countess, wife of the same earl, a woman devoted to God, sent word privately to her faithful bishop that if by God’s gift he should chance to find the body of the holy martyr, he should reserve from it some small portion as a blessing, so that since she could not be present with the others as she desired, she might at least have something which she could afterwards venerate for love of the saint. In crowds therefore the people came from distant parts with the devout bishop to the place of the holy repose; and there, while the bishop preached with grave devotion, the whole assembly of people who were present, at the bishop’s exhortation, prostrated themselves in prayer, and with one voice asked in supplication for the grace of finding, for those to whom God had given the heart to seek, the precious treasure. Then, the people rising from prayer, the ministers appointed for this purpose strove to dig in the church’s oratory; and they spent the whole time from the first hour until the sixth hour digging in turns, but profited nothing. They searched the bowels of the earth, and the deposits committed to the earth were not found. And some began to depart with the utmost indignation who had assembled with the utmost devotion. But Edmund, more confounded by the wrong to the saint than by his own disgrace, kindled with the torches of faith, seized a mattock and began to dig in the very place where those had dug who, finding nothing, had departed. And when with a second stroke he had driven the mattock more strongly into the earth, the iron returning a clang he believed he had struck some stone; and the rebound of the stone comforted the faithful man’s spirit for a better hope. And then, his hope refreshed, he pressed more vehemently on the work begun and, casting the earth from the pit, found a stone coffin in which the resplendent pearl was hidden. Perhaps because the just and the unjust were admitted everywhere and indiscriminately to the sight of the heavenly mystery, the finding of the holy body was delayed and reserved until those who had come irreverently and unjustly had withdrawn. But the bishop had remained behind with his household while the crowds impatiently departed, a solicitous watcher to see the end of the matter. And when he saw the coffin that had been found, he at once fell prostrate on the ground, he and the few faithful who were there; and with tears broken forth for joy, praying more intently and at length, they called for the aid of the Godhead and of the holy martyr. And approaching nearer they rolled back the stone laid on top, and at once the whole church was filled with the fragrance of a wondrous odour, and such sweetness affected all who were there that they declared most certainly that they were set amid the delights of paradise. And seeing the long-desired and now at last discovered treasure, precious above gold and topaz, all for the greatness of their joy heaped tears on tears, bent their knees and gave thanks; but none presumed to touch the most sacred body. And for some time a contention arising from reverence was held between clergy and laity as to who should approach to touch it, while each, presuming less of his own merits, held himself excused; at last with one accord they looked to the bishop and declared that it belonged to his merit and office alike that he alone, or at least first, should touch the holy thing. But he, excusing himself with grave reluctance — since those who are placed over others in office do not always excel them in merit — at last, overcome by the weariness of their persistent pleading, drew near to touch and to lift it from the coffin. The body, consecrated to God by the shedding of sacred blood, was washed by the bishop; and washed, it was first wrapped in most clean linen cloths, then in precious palls; and laid with great honour in a tomb it was placed in a more eminent part of the church. The water with which the most holy body was washed was poured out, by the bishop’s express command, in the corner of the oratory on the north side. And it afterwards profited many — not only men but also animals — suffering from various kinds of diseases. For whenever the nature of men or of animals was weighed down by a malignant or intermittent sickness, dust sprinkled with the sacred water and cast into a little water, and drunk by the sufferer through the water’s medium, most quickly conferred health and preserved it the longer when conferred. Now this finding of the holy king and martyr Oswin took place in the four hundred and fourteenth year from his passion — that is, in the one thousand and sixty-fifth year of the Lord’s Incarnation, on the fifth day before the ides of March. And because the same Earl Tostig would not be present at the holy finding made within his earldom, in that same year, his sins demanding it, he was driven from the kingdom of the English and went into exile with Baldwin, count of Flanders, whose daughter he had joined to himself in marriage. And in the following year he was removed from this world by the sword of Harold king of England and of his own brother, together with Harold the king of the Norwegians, in the place then called Stamford Bridge but now Battle Bridge. These things done, Bishop Ægelwin, not forgetful of the Countess Judith, placed apart by itself while washing the body the hair of the holy head — which putrefaction had not consumed, age had not corrupted and no worm had in any way injured — and when the office of translation was duly performed, carried it with him to the countess with the utmost reverence. But whether the saint’s body was found wholly free of corruption, or whether, the flesh being consumed as corruption requires, the integrity of the bones and hair was reserved by the condescension of heavenly grace, is not read; and therefore it is not presumed to be defined by our pen. Yet the hairs, without doubt, could be found incorrupt though the body was reduced to dust. For we have seen men of good testimony who declared that they had seen, when the bodies of the dead were consumed, their hairs incorrupt — of whose holiness nevertheless they had heard nothing. Therefore it is far more credible that the same happened in the saint, of whose glory we are most certain, although we are not in every way certain of his body’s incorruption. The potent and devout woman therefore, seeing the holy king’s hairs incorrupt, wondered exceedingly, but rejoiced the more devoutly. And seeing no small crowd which had accompanied the bishop’s journey and had heard of the unimpaired hairs of the saint, she wished to confirm them in the faith and in devotion to Saint Oswin. Ordering therefore a great fire to be kindled in the midst of the royal hall, she cast the hairs laid on her lap into the devouring flame; but the flame brought no harm to the holy hairs. Seeing this, the venerable countess and the innumerable people standing round the fire were made the more certain of the martyr’s merit and were turned most devoutly to the prosecution of thanksgiving. When Earl Tostig was proscribed, his inheritance devolved to the royal treasury. And when England was subdued by the Normans and William duke of the Normans was consecrated king of the English, in due time the earldom of the Northumbrians was given by the king’s munificence to Robert de Mowbray, a man noble by a long series of ancestors, tall of stature and glorious in the elegance of military prowess. He began to cultivate the holy king and martyr Oswin with the diligence of surpassing devotion, and he enriched with an abundance of lands and estates the church in which his most holy body rested — for it was contained within the circuit of his castle at Tynemouth — and placed in it men of the monastic order taken from the monastery of Saint Alban, the English proto-martyr, who, under the name of priors, governed the monastery in which the holy King and Martyr Oswin now rests. The beginnings of this foundation, however, as is said, Earl Tostig had laid; and they built it from the foundations. And when the new monastery building was finished, the glorious martyr was translated from the old church in which he had been buried after his martyrdom was accomplished and where he was found by Bishop Ægelwin, into the new monastery, and solemnly reposed in a new shrine worthy of so great a martyr, in the eleven hundred and third year from the Lord’s Incarnation, on the tenth day before the kalends of September, that is, the day of his passion. There were present at this venerable translation Ranulf bishop of Durham, Richard abbot of the monastery of Saint Albans, Hugh abbot of Salisbury, and an innumerable multitude of both sexes and various ages who had gathered for the day from distant and neighbouring parts, drawn by devotion to the celebration of the translation. Let us therefore rejoice in the Lord, most beloved, and celebrate the repeated solemnities of the holy king and martyr Oswin with more eager care. Let us banish every cloud of sadness where the host of manifold virtues restores the serenity of gladness. The martyr’s glory, set in the serene, invites thousands of the rich to the serenity of paradise by his example. For he entered on the way of holiness not compelled by the necessity of poverty nor, as usually happens, by the weakness of sickness; but drawn by the sole contemplation of the Creator freely loved, he lived in purple after David’s manner, poor and sorrowing: poor in spirit, though he abounded in royal riches and delights; and sorrowing in spirit, not setting his heart on abounding things. For the more he abounded in means, the less he flowed out in desires. In the midst of the clamouring household which was all too great for him, he withdrew fleeing far off and remained in the solitude of the mind, frequented though he was by the multitude of the peoples subject to him. As the dignity of the kingdom demanded, he bore himself outwardly; but ruling his affections within, he exercised himself manfully in the love of humility and poverty. He girded himself to every pursuit of spiritual exercise, but poured himself out the more diligently in works of mercy. With his own abundance he strove to supply the want of the wretched. For he reckoned the superfluities of the rich to be the necessities of the poor. By the authority of the royal office he believed he owed most to those who could do least, and most justice to be shown to those who were most oppressed. In the commendation of royal humility the Venerable Bede set forth an example for all to imitate, but fully carried out by no kings down to this present day. For to be humbled under the sway of a superior is the exaction of duty; to be humbled under the office of a social covenant is the promotion of merit; but to be humbled at last under the service of an inferior dignity is the consummation of progress. With the grace of this perfect humility the holy King and Martyr Oswin shone, who cast himself at Bishop Aidan’s feet, who in the midst of the ranks of his chief men begged pardon, who trembled at a fault not committed and feared that the discretion of his questioning had redounded to the prelate’s injury. We know that royal majesty is set above pontifical dignity, both by the singular sacrament of spiritual anointing and by the pre-eminent dominion of temporal sovereignty. Yet it humbled itself before an inferior order — not in a chamber but in the palace-hall; not before household servants only, but before the many standing round everywhere, both bond and free, both unknown and known. At the dinner hour it did not turn the flesh-pots over in mind, but more bitterly reflected that it had slipped in word, and fell down sooner to satisfaction than reclined to refreshment. The intoxication of tears preceded the gorging on food, and it first rent the heart with contrition before it stuffed the body with richer fare. Bishop Aidan saw and trembled, and sitting at table was moved to compunction even to a suffusion of tears, where he was also taught in the spirit of the king’s impending martyrdom. Just as the tongue of a preacher grows dry and sometimes fails in its office on account of the hearers’ fault, so also the majesty of a just ruler is often snatched from this life on account of the inequality of manners that rules in the subject people. So indeed the holy King Oswin — because his people did not deserve to have such a ruler — was pierced by the sword of the envious and was translated to the fellowship of the holy angels. No pen has woven the record of his most holy life — any more than of Saint Melchizedek’s — fully or as it deserved, except the Venerable Bede, who in his History of the English briefly touched great things and comprised much; who does not write of the saint principally but makes mention of him incidentally. Of the life of Saint Melchizedek the Scripture says not a little, and yet, making frequent mention of him, bears witness by insinuation that he was a most holy king. So although we gather little of our holy king’s life by the benefit of Scripture, the innumerable celebration of miracles silently alleges, at his glorious body’s finding, the prerogative of his merits. With the peace of the saints of England I would say it: he is not in the number of those who renew signs more often, who more singularly work wonders, who more strictly take vengeance on the unruly, or who more propitiously hear the good and the modest. Therefore, King and Martyr Oswin, incline the ear of your most serene clemency to our prayers, and let our miseries today merit the grace of reconciliation at the glory of your renowned finding. May your holy passion prepare for you alone the dwelling of eternity; but may the finding of your body spread the patronage of so renowned an advocate for the whole English nation. Let England and all its fullness rejoice that it has brought forth from itself a tree planted by the courses of the waters on earth and exalted by the height of its summit above the heavens. Let the Deirans especially rejoice, who have changed their king into their patron and have deserved by his patronage to be delivered from the wrath of God. Let the Bernicians mourn that the mirror of humility, the sanctuary of chastity and the dining-couch of charity was taken from their midst by their own dagger. Let those learn to return good for evil who feel him propitious for the deserts of his merits at the time of his finding, whom they pierced with wounding darts at the moment of his passion to fulfil their king’s wickedness. Let us too study to rejoice with the Deirans and beware of mourning with the Bernicians, that in all our doings we may feel the patronage of his clemency who offended the will of the Lord Jesus in nothing — the same our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit is everlasting glory. Amen.

Chapter Five: Here begins the preface of the virtues and miracles of the glorious and most holy king and martyr of Deira, Oswin, which were spread abroad far and wide after the revelation of his body and are held in the greatest veneration. #

¹ The holy King and Martyr Oswin therefore, after his translation to the heavenly kingdoms, shone abroad with many miracles. But since through the negligence of the ancients only a very few have been committed to memory in writing, let this alone suffice to be written, for the commendation of his holiness and for the edification of those who come after, of the things which we ourselves have seen, or which we have learned by the faithful report of those who saw them. For we know that, as many miracles are done by the saints openly, so many more are done in secret by the hidden counsel of God; and therefore the number of their virtues cannot be fully comprehended by human understanding, but only estimated by the devotion of faith. It has seemed good therefore to write a few of the many — even of the very many — miracles which the Lord has deigned to work through His glorious king and martyr Oswin, not indeed as their dignity demands, but as our small ability permits.

Chapter Six: Here begin the miracles which are recorded as worked by him after the revelation of his sacred body. First, how his hairs, set in the fire to prove their power, suffered no corruption from it. #

¹ And when the fame of the revealing of the holy body of the glorious king and martyr of Deira, Oswin, had spread through the whole province of the Northumbrians — in the church of the blessed Mother of God, Saint Mary the Virgin, at Tynemouth — and Ægelwin bishop of Durham had consulted Tostig earl of that province, the son of Godwin earl of Kent, how it might most fittingly be done, many of the faithful hastened to the place of his rest, desiring with all their hearts to be present at so great a spectacle. Now it came to pass that the countess, wife of the same earl, Judith by name, sent word privately to the bishop as he was already hastening to the church, that if, by God’s gift, he should chance to find the body of the holy martyr, he should reserve from it some small portion as a blessing, so that since she could not be present with the others as she desired, she might at least have something which she could afterwards venerate for love of the saint. The venerable bishop therefore, when in washing the most sacred body he had come to the head — not unmindful of the countess’s devout request — took a few of the hairs still clinging to the holy crown, which he kept most devoutly in order to give them to the woman afterwards, until the office should be completed. So, the ministry finished, the bishop, after psalms and litanies giving thanks to Almighty God and blessing the people standing round, carried away with him as he departed the hairs of the holy head — which the sinner’s oil had never anointed — and joyfully brought them to the countess, who greatly desired nothing else and was anxiously awaiting his coming for this reason. Receiving them with the utmost devotion and due veneration, with what joy she was moved, and what thanks she gave to God, and how many tears the devout woman shed for gladness — who among mortals could ever express in speech or writing? And because, according to Paul’s word, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, the same woman enclosed the saint’s hairs in no casket, but resolved first to prove them by the purgation of fire — not that she doubted them in any way, but that the martyr’s merit might thereby be shown forth more widely on every side. For it is written of such: “And a hair of your head shall not perish.” O kindly boldness and bold kindness! Without delay a great fire was kindled in the hall, and when the hairs had been laid upon the burning mass, prayer was poured out devoutly to God by all with one accord. A wondrous thing: nothing indeed is consumed more quickly than hair by the smell of fire, yet the hair cast into the blaze raging on every side was not harmed. O marvellous turning of things! For the fire did not cool for want of fuel, but rather, when a heap of wood was thrown on, burned the more and more fiercely. What then shall we say — that the hair took on the strength of a harder substance, or that the fire lost the heat of its own nature? By no means; but He who made the three youths walk safe and unharmed in the furnace of Babylon Himself protected the hairs of His faithful one from the fire, by reason of his merit. The countess too, struck with awe at the greatness of the deed, fell prostrate on the ground; and begging God and the holy martyr long with tearful sobs, at length she arose trembling. The fire being therefore extinguished, the people who had gathered returned home, proclaiming Almighty God wonderful in His saints. And the venerable woman took up the holy martyr’s hairs from the place of the fire and laid them up, at the bishop’s direction, in a new little casket which she had prepared for this purpose, with fitting honour; and she ever after showed them the greatest veneration.

Chapter Seven: How a certain chaplain who presumed to lie less reverently in the tower of his church felt the penalty of that presumption wondrously in that very place. #

¹ Now the Earl Tostig already mentioned had a certain chaplain whom he loved not merely as one among many, but above all others, alone and specially among his confidants. When feasts were held at Tynemouth as was customary of the province, this man — because the village was small and not sufficient to lodge so many kinds of men as attended the earl — had a bed made for himself under the tower of the church in which the most reverend body of the holy king and martyr Oswin rested. Returning therefore drunk with wine from the earl’s court at dusk, he began to prepare himself under the said tower for the shameful exercise of lust with a harlot; when suddenly a shaking of the walls was made in the church, so that at once the whole fabric of the church was feared about to fall. Now there was at that time before the tomb of the blessed martyr a man well religious, keeping vigil and praying, who, fearing for the chaplain lest sleeping he should be crushed by the now imminent ruin, ran to rouse him from sleep, and unexpectedly found him ready to lie with the whore. And abhorring the sin, fired with the zeal of Phinehas, he at once cast the woman out of the church, and chastised the priest with a harder rebuke — in the spirit of Daniel — because he neither feared God nor reverenced men. And at once the whole storm ceased. In this so wondrous deed the holy king and martyr Oswin made known how just He is and how merciful — who out of the rigour of justice shook the whole fabric of the church as though to ruin, but out of the gentleness of mercy, forbidding the completion of the shameful work, held back the impending ruin. Now the man of God who had cast the harlot out of the church afterwards became a monk at Durham, and used often to tell this miracle.

Chapter Eight: Of a certain knight’s horse driven mad, but wondrously freed by a cloth laid upon his bier. #

¹ At a certain time, when that most victorious King William, who subdued England to the Normans with a strong hand, was returning from Scotland with a powerful army, he pitched his tents by the river Tyne near the place now called Newcastle, which was formerly called Monkchester. For it happened that the river was then so swollen that it could nowhere be forded, nor was a crossing open by the aid of the bridge which is now seen. The king therefore made some stay there on account of this necessity. Now the Normans, accustomed to live by plunder, seized provisions for themselves and their beasts from the surrounding places. But because the poverty of the place did not suffice for so great a multitude, hearing that the substance of the whole province had been deposited at Tynemouth, they came to the place in haste to seize for themselves what was needed for food. Now the king had a commander of the soldiers named Robert, who had a great company of unmanageable followers. When he had seen from afar the tower of the church of the blessed king and martyr Oswin and had been told of the saint’s merit by those who related it, he, reverencing the saint, turned back his course and forbade all his men to go further. But his men, without his knowledge, hastening to Tynemouth, loaded themselves with plunder and, laden with a curse, carried it back to the royal army and gave of it to their horses to eat. Now the same Robert had a dearest horse, on which he used to ride and exercise arms whenever necessity required. To this horse, among the others, some of the plunder was given to eat. They all ate greedily, for they were tormented by long hunger from want of food. But some at once died, others were driven to madness. For they betrayed their madness by various signs: some tore their own limbs with their own teeth; others spat out their bitten-off tongues and hurt all who approached with hoof and bite. Hearing therefore that his so dear horse had been driven mad with the others, the same commander grieved; and learning the cause, he deliberated with himself how to appease the indignation of the holy martyr. With all haste therefore he sent to the saint the best cloth he had, and ordered it to be spread over his most reverend body. You would wonder! At the same moment that the cloth was laid upon the tomb, the horse was restored to its former health and the tribune filled with manifold joy. And he ceased not to proclaim the saint’s merit, nor delayed to tell the deed to all whom he could, whenever opportunity was found.

Chapter Nine: How a certain knight, falling from the rocks with his horse, was found not only alive but unharmed, together with his horse. #

¹ Another miracle also happened in the time of the same king’s son, which was often told by him in whom it was accomplished, and to many. King William the younger had from time to time sent Nigel d’Aubigny, attended by a great and strong host of soldiers together with others of his magnates, to avenge the injuries inflicted on him by the Scots. Returning therefore to Newcastle, their business accomplished as desired, when the provisions they had brought with them in their baggage failed, they began to be in want. For that place and the surrounding region in those days, being rarely inhabited, had scarcely any supply of food; and the little it had lay hidden at Tynemouth in the safe-keeping of the holy king and martyr Oswin, to avoid the raids of the royal army. Now the same Nigel, though a strenuous knight, was yet a man who hated plunder, most humble and most full of holy fear. So when the necessaries of life that could be bought failed and hunger pressed, he unwillingly permitted his men to go down to Tynemouth to seek provisions. When they arrived there, the servants of God dwelling in the place met them with the body of the holy martyr in the narrow passage of the very gate, humbly begging them to spare the saint’s deposit for the saint’s reverence. Now there was a certain knight named Nigel de Wast in the company of those who had come down to plunder — a God-fearing man, kinsman and most dear to the same Nigel d’Aubigny. Seeing the saint’s body at hand, and reverencing the saint, as one trained in arms he laid aside his intent to plunder and turned the horse on which he sat away from the entrance of the gate. And stretching his hands to heaven, he vowed that he would not taste of that plunder until the saint should pardon him for having come there with plundering intent. Now the place is narrow and overhangs an immense precipice; and the precipice itself, hanging over the ocean and full of many great rocks, is terrible and dreadful even to see. But one of the robbers, returning from the holy place laden with sacrilegious spoil and hastening to go out through the gate in which Nigel had halted opposite, struck him and his horse unawares with the impact of his load and cast him down miserably. His shield was dashed on the rocks, his spear hurled away, the rider was parted from his horse, and each at last was received and covered by the sand, though in different places. What more? By the merits of the holy martyr to whom the knight had shown reverence on his coming, both rider and horse were preserved unharmed, to the saint’s glory. And drawn out of the sand and set again upon his recovered horse, he returned unharmed to his lord, recounting with the utmost devotion the wonders that had been worked in him by the merits of the holy king and martyr Oswin.

Chapter Ten: How the robbers of ships who violated his peace gave back what they had taken by force, being drowned. #

¹ It happened once that, through the ferocity of the Scots, their king quarrelled with the same William king of the English, surnamed Rufus, and wished to withdraw himself and his people from his dominion. The most fierce king of the English therefore, moved to no small indignation, gathered an army and came to Newcastle, which is set on the river Tyne. For the Scots, ranging through the whole province of the Northumbrians in devastation, had come to Durham; and since there was none to resist, their eye spared no sex or condition — but hearing of the king of England’s approach, they strove to save their lives by the refuge of flight. The king therefore, as has been said, seeing the evils they had inflicted on his people, grieved vehemently and hastened at once to pursue them. Now fifty ships, which he had ordered to be laden with wheat among the West Angles and sent to Scotland, shortly put in at the mouth of the river Tyne. And the men in the ships, since there was none to restrain them while the king was away, ran through the region plundering, and did not spare the goods deposited in the safe-keeping of the holy king and martyr Oswin. For a certain old woman, who supported her aged steps with a staff, had woven a small web and had set in it all her hope of a year’s provision. A sea-robber tore it from her hands and carried it off to his ship. Weeping and wailing, she begged with much prayer and miserable tears that it be given back to her for the reverence of her patron Saint Oswin; but the proud robber despised both her and her patron. She however made her way, with what effort she could, to the holy martyr’s monastery, and there begged the saint with aged persistence, sought him and knocked, that he would restore her web; and she commended vengeance against her enemy to him as his own. But God, who does not despise the tears of widows — rather He said that they mount up from their cheek — heard the tearful sobs of the old woman through the merits of the holy martyr. The next day therefore, a fair wind blowing, the sailors reached Coquet — that is, a small island about twenty miles from Tynemouth. The island, lying before the mouth of the river Coquet, took its name from it. A wondrous thing, to be attributed to the merits of the holy king and martyr Oswin: in the utmost calm of the air all the ships began to strike upon the rocks and to dash against one another, and the waves, without any whirlwind, began at once to rage and to swallow up the sailors, and to engulf nearly all of them. And on that same day not only were the bodies of the dead cast up, but everything they had stolen was carried back by the sea’s surge onto that same shore within the bounds of Tynemouth. Then the inhabitants of the region, who had hidden themselves in remote places in the land or woods for fear of the raiders’ approach, came out again in whatever safety they could find; and scattered along the shore, each found all that he had lost. No one took anything that was not his own; and the robber who had torn away an old woman’s weaving lay embracing that same web in the sand, until the old woman herself, though slower to come, arrived. Taking it up the more gladly and eagerly, she taunted the dead robber, saying: “Yesterday I begged you, O cruellest of men, and you did not hear me; I begged my Lord and Patron, and He heard me. See, you give back unknowing the web you knowingly stole from me; and the hellish pains you earned while living you now pay while dead, at the bidding of that very saint whom you despised in me.” So it is that the saints open to those who knock more wondrously than is thought, when men reckon their ears turned away from the desire of the poor. Yesterday the old woman knocked with her insistent sobbing and Saint Oswin seemed not to notice; today the cloth was restored to her in her despair, and to all the others what they had lost — and He was gloriously magnified who worked such wonders. For when the king returned, his business done, this report was spread abroad in familiar talk throughout the whole province, to him and to all his chief men; and the martyr was held in fitting reverence.

Chapter Eleven: How on the day of his translation from the old church to the new, a certain man’s horse, slipping from rock to rock, was not only wondrously saved from the huge precipice beneath, but still more wondrously, bound as its feet were, was called back up. #

¹ In the year from the Lord’s Incarnation one thousand one hundred and ten, in the times of Henry the most excellent king of England, son of King William who subdued the English to the Normans with a strong hand, the lord Richard, abbot of the church of Saint Alban the English proto-martyr, translated the precious relics of the most blessed king and martyr Oswin, with great rejoicing of the clergy, into the new church of Saint Mary at Tynemouth, from the little church of the same Virgin in which his most holy body had been found; and from the old bier in which it had long been contained it was honourably raised into a new one, on the thirteenth day before the kalends of September, the day on which he also suffered. There were present also at this joyful festival — doubled, so to speak, in its joys — Ranulf bishop of Durham and the lord Hugh abbot of Salisbury, with no small religious company of monks and clerks. But how great a people of both sexes and of different ages the famous glory of the blessed martyr drew to the celebration of so great a solemnity, and gathered the invited from various parts, our littleness cannot relate. For that the glorious merits of the holy martyr might even then be made manifest as was usual, it is to be believed that the testimonies of so many and such great men were present not without the divine will. In the presence of nearly all of these it was divinely declared what his merits are with the Lord — the reason why a double festival is celebrated on that day. For when the same fathers had performed with exultant minds that office of the utmost devotion and piety, and the solemnities of mass had been celebrated, and the rejoicing people were about to return each to his own dwelling, a miracle of this kind chanced to happen, to be related by us after our fashion. A certain native therefore, who had also come most devoutly to the festival, hastening to return home, came to the place beyond the monastery — for there is there a plain most pleasant with grass and little flowers — where he had left his horse grazing with others, its forefeet firmly hobbled (as is the custom) with twisted withies lest it should stray too far. Now the horse, while greedily pursuing the richer grass which seemed to flee before it as it cropped the parts already eaten, suddenly plunged down from the rock. It plunged, I say, but was saved; and was not hurt by the plunge. O wondrous miracle! For not only had that animal suffered no injury, but it was cropping in safety the pleasant pastures it had ignorantly sought, upon a certain lip of the rock jutting out into the sea. When its master did not find it grazing among the others, he stood amazed; and searching the more carefully to and fro with his eyes, he feared lest perhaps, while it was descending ill to the lower pastures with bound feet, it had slipped and perished in the depths. For there are there, let me tell those who do not know, very high rocks, horribly ruinous and steep. He approached therefore, and looking down trembling and anxious from the top to the depths, saw the horse standing on a certain mass, as I have said, and having suffered no injury at all from so great a fall. Seeing this, he wondered greatly and grieved; for seeing his beast set far from him on the immense precipice, he utterly despaired of human help to have it back. Returning quickly therefore, he spoke such words to himself: “Almighty God, since it is Yours alone to be able to do all things, give me back my horse, restore me my beast.” And turning towards the monastery, he cried aloud saying: “Saint Oswin, precious martyr of God, succour me today, and by the aid of your merits call back my horse from the depths and free it from the peril of imminent death. You indeed, blessed martyr, deserve to give it back to me; I ask it of you, whom I had devoutly brought to your threshold for the honour of the twofold joy of this solemnity. Do therefore and draw it up mightily, which is known by your merits to be wondrously held among the hanging rocks. Otherwise I go away sad today, never again — with your peace be it said — to return to your feasts, nor ever again to profess you a martyr elect of God.” While he thus simply went on, and many who had run there on hearing him looked on, and they vainly strove to help the horse with ropes let down, that horse — I know not by what unutterable means or order, just as it was, with feet bound — was called back up and restored unharmed to its master. Receiving it back, praises and thanks were multiplied to God and the holy martyr by all.

Chapter Twelve: Of a certain servant’s sudden sickness, which he had deserved through presumption; how he was healed of it through his merits. #

¹ There is also another praiseworthy miracle which, on the same man’s report — in whom or concerning whom it was then worked by the blessed king and martyr Oswin — we declare to be true. For on the day after the festival of the translation, two servants coming to the place where the saint had rested in the old little church at Tynemouth, at the sacristan’s bidding and with his help, were to carry off certain wooden columns which had sustained the sweet weight of the precious pearl. And when that brother and servant who seemed the elder had humbly prayed that they might accomplish the work worthily and without the burden of toil, they drew near, bending their knees and showing reverence to the place itself for the martyr’s sake. But the other servant, acting indiscreetly as the young do — for he was the younger — neglected to pray and humbly assist as the others had done. Seizing therefore a timber fixed deep in the earth, presuming on his own strength he irreverently jested and struggled in vain enough to draw it out. Without delay he was struck with the penalty of his presumption: touched by a sudden sickness, he fell to the ground, saying that he was sick to death and could work no more. And he added, speaking to those standing by: “Deservedly,” he said, “do I suffer this, as a foolish presumer who paid no honour to the holy martyr. So it is that, as though struck on the forehead with a hammer, I, wretched, ache in my whole body from head to foot. But pray for me, I beg you, imploring God and His holy martyr Oswin, that pardon for my folly and health for my body may be granted.” So when the brethren had prayed for him to God and the glorious martyr, the man, corrected by the fatherly scourge, repented with tears, was healed that same day, and, working with the others, cheerfully carried out the work begun.

Chapter Thirteen: How a certain woman of Durham received back through him the use of all the limbs of her right side, which she had lost through long sickness. #

¹ In the following year a certain woman, who is known to have dwelt in the city of Durham for many courses of years and to have been deprived of the use of all the limbs of her right side, was delivered from her infirmity by the merits of the holy king and martyr Oswin in this manner. For although she seemed to have eyes quite lively and seeing clearly, yet, deprived of the light of one eye, she had seen nothing with it for seventeen years. Her hand too had so lost its strength that she could neither stretch out her fingers, nor was the palm of that fist safe from the annoyance of the nails miserably piercing it. Nor did that withered hand only fail to help her body, but it even grievously hurt the woman herself. Her foot likewise being dried up and crookedly bent back, she had become so useless in her whole body that she could by no means move from place to place alone, nor go anywhere except supported by crutches. One night therefore, after her accustomed prayers and tears poured out to the Lord, as she slept in her bed, a man of wondrous beauty clothed in purple and royal garments stood by her, as it seemed to her, saying: “Rise, woman, and in the morning strive to reach, as you may, the town called Tynemouth, where in the church of the blessed Virgin Mary rests the holy king and martyr Oswin, the feasts of whose venerable passion and translation are to be repeated with annual devotion three weeks from now. And there, by the merits and prayers of the same martyr worthy of God, you shall be healed — unless you delay to believe and to come to the feast.” Saying no more, he disappeared. The woman therefore, awaking and gladdened by such a voice, as one desirous of recovering health, at sunrise brooked no delay. And when, leaning on her crutches with downcast face, she prepared to creep rather than to walk in her usual way, she declared that at once, divinely helped (as must be confessed), she was more vigorous than usual and steadier for going on. Yet she could not reach the same monastery — which is not much more than twelve miles distant from the city of Durham — before three weeks, being detained by the too great inconvenience. And when, the journey scarcely accomplished, she had come to the river Tyne, she saw a man sitting in a little boat on the shore, as though diligently waiting there for her, who said to her: “Do you wish to cross here?” To whom she said: “I do,” she said, “and I humbly ask it.” And approaching, she entered the boat, and they crossed. When she heard that the solemnity of the most blessed king and martyr Oswin was to be celebrated the next day, greatly rejoicing she hastened to the monastery. And lest she should be pressed or disturbed by the multitude of people flowing in from every quarter for the festival, having made a prayer at the tomb of the holy martyr, she prudently withdrew into a certain little chamber of the church; and there apart giving herself to prayer and silently awaiting God’s mercy, she wept with sighs drawn from the depth of her breast, stretching out her two palms to the stars. Now an innumerable people stood round and begged the Lord that He would deign to heal her by the prayers and merits of His martyr. Why should I linger over many words? As the evening time now drew near, the woman began to receive her health. Soon therefore, God’s wondrous power working wondrously, her body long contracted — the bones and sinews receiving their lost strength — was, wondrous to tell, stretched out, sweating much for the exceeding pain, and restored to its former soundness, its health recovered. For her eye, the darkness wiped away, was enlightened; and the woman obtained the strength of her hand, rather, the health of the whole right side of her body. All wept for joy. Those rejoiced and exulted most of all — her neighbours and fellow-citizens — who had known her infirm for so very long and had succoured her infirmity in many necessities. The devout comforters, I say, of her long infirmity became fit witnesses of her recovered health. What more? The people began to cry out and say: “Truly God is wonderful in His saints, truly holy in His works.” The martyr’s merit is proclaimed, the woman’s faith is praised together. And she, remaining eight days in the monastery, after giving thanks to God and the holy martyr, went forth safe and glad into Scotland for the sake of prayer; rightly rendering to the Lord, healed, what she had learned while sick.

Chapter Fourteen: How a certain man named Arkillus, cast down from a height on his church at Tynemouth, returned unharmed to the work begun within a few days. #

¹ In the same year also, on the feast day of the holy martyrs Maurice and his companions, we who were present saw — and seeing, grieved — a certain workman named Arkillus, a corpulent man, fall from the highest station of one part of our church at Tynemouth onto great and sharp stones, so that his head was broken, and he seemed to have expired, being bruised in almost his whole body. And when we had come to him and despaired of his safety or life, at last, God being propitious, breathing he opened his eyes as though weighed down by death. Without delay he was able to speak; and after three days he was better, the brethren serving God and their holy martyr the blessed Oswin in that place making prayer for him; and within a few days he began to work unharmed as before. We might therefore greatly wonder, dearest brethren, at this man, so grievously fallen and so quickly restored alike to health and to work — did we not know beyond doubt that the most blessed king and martyr Oswin had interceded for him, his own workman, with God. But we know that God works even greater things than these, frequently, through the same saint’s merits. For what should that most precious gem of martyrs, shining in heavenly blessedness, not obtain from Him who glorifies him? Rightly therefore let this saint be proclaimed by all, feared, honoured — through whom God the giver of all good things, and for whom He deigns to work such great things — to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

Chapter Fifteen: How the same workman was delivered by him from fantastic illusions. #

¹ About the same time the devil, the enemy of human salvation and adversary of all goodness, was accustomed to trouble the same brother Arkillus — who still survives to this day — because he could not prevail over him waking, with fantastic illusions while he slept. One night also, while that brother resting in his bed took his sleep, the usual tempter was at hand, feigning a little black boy clinging heavily to the brother’s back, as it seemed to him. And when it had most impudently afflicted him with a long oppression and the heavy mass of its malice, it seemed to the brother that at last, putting his hands behind him, he seized the little one with manly effort and, breaking it all as it were into small pieces, cast it into the fire that threatened him — alas the shame! “You have conquered me,” it said, “you have conquered — but know that for this injury you shall suffer a grievous breaking of legs soon. For tomorrow, repaying you like for like, I shall have both your legs broken.” To whom the brother said: “Concerning me, God’s will shall be done — but for now, you shall burn first.” Thus indeed can the frauds of Satan be driven back and spurned even by us while we sleep, if while we watch in body we watch not over sleeping sins but over God’s commandments, and resist the same adversary soberly and faithfully. So the blessed Peter admonishes, saying: “Be prudent and watch in prayers. And be sober and watch, because your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, strong in the faith.” Truly this man knew soberly to watch and strongly in faith to resist the adversary seeking to devour him, who also triumphs over him with so beautiful a vision by the burning of fire. And fittingly indeed did the spirit of malignant inflammation seem to perish as though by avenging flames, who had come for this purpose: and like a little thief had fraudulently clung to the brother’s hinder parts, that he might kindle the flames of vices in him. But by God’s favour, since that brother was truly, as we have said, simple and innocent, it did not burn in him, the Lord protecting him. The most wicked enemy therefore being thus triumphed over and confounded in dreams, the brother awoke, much hurt indeed by the devilish pressure, but rejoicing in the victory and in the casting down of his enemy, though imaginary. Meanwhile, day being restored to the lands, the brother, not unmindful of the night vision, armed his forehead with the sign of the saving cross and hastened early in the morning to his accustomed work — for he is a carpenter most useful to the monastery. What need of many words? The brother is at hand to work; the invisible enemy also is at hand, ready to avenge himself strongly on the brother if he can. The monk begins to work, the devil to lie in wait. The one sweats with all his might at his labour and obedience; the other, the patron of disobedience, envies him. Both labour, but far differently: the brother, that his work may prosper; the adversary, that he may cast him down. The one to profit, the other to hinder — as the sequel of events proved. For when the said brother stood upon the beams of the further part of the brothers’ dormitory on which he was then working, in order to place the flooring there in skilful order, of certain wider and thicker timbers, as is usually done, chancing to be intent on other things, he set his left foot incautiously and slid down to the depths together with a certain great timber which he had trodden ill. Yet far otherwise than the lying spirit had foretold had the benign God decreed concerning the servant of His beloved holy king and martyr Oswin. For although — perhaps some sins demanding it — he seemed to have incurred a fall near to death, in that he had fallen twenty-one feet and more to the ground amid the stones and timbers laid here and there, nevertheless, God helping, through the accustomed aid of His holy martyr, not only was no bone of his broken, but not even the extremity of his skin was in any way hurt, save the accustomed weakness of his feet — for he often suffered pain in his feet. And when his fellow-workers ran up weeping to carry out the sooner the body which they now believed crushed and lifeless, they saw him sitting where he had fallen, suffering pain only in the feet upon which he had fallen, more heavily than usual. And while they wept and were not a little amazed at what they saw, he said cheerfully: “Do not be afraid, but go back the more secure; and carry me to the tomb of our most blessed patron.” And when he had been brought into the cloister we greatly condoled with his injury, because he was greatly loved by us all for the goodness of his character. As we therefore condoled with him in brotherly charity and asked how he fared, he answered saying: “Well, brethren, by your prayers. I also flourish with such safety of mind and body through God’s grace and our martyr’s help that I would even now be working as yesterday and the day before, were I not hindered by the bruising of my feet alone. For there is one thing only I fear — lest the evil spirit’s presage which I heard this night in a dream be true.” And relating in order what he had seen in the dream, he said: “The devil also threatened me that today he would break both my legs; but whether he spoke truly — God forbid — or falsely, as is his custom, I am as yet uncertain.” Hearing these things, handling him more carefully and finding no fracture of his bones, we gave praises and thanks to Almighty God for the benefit of his unhoped-for escape, and carried him to the tomb of the blessed martyr as he had asked. And by his merits and prayers interceding for his servant with God, it is agreed both that he was saved from the peril of death and that he was restored alike to his former health and to his work.

Chapter Sixteen: How a woman of the Durham district was healed in his church of the kidney complaint from which she suffered. #

¹ Our mind is moved to commit to lettered memory this also: a miracle full of praise and faith which we know was done in the following year. For it seems absurd and unworthy that as much as the Almighty Lord deigns to work through His glorious king and martyr Oswin should be recorded in writing by no one, or only to some degree. Therefore, since there is none who performs this work more earnestly, we, devoutly presuming and confident both of the merits of the blessed martyr himself and of obedience, choose to write something of his virtues and miracles in whatever way rather than nothing at all. A certain woman therefore, dwelling in the district of the city of Durham and for a long time bowed down with a grievous sickness of the kidneys, her body contracted so that she could by no means go anywhere upright nor without the support of crutches, came, though afflicted with such inconvenience, to the festival of the same martyr as best she could. And when, placed in the church of the blessed martyr, she had prayed most intently with tears in the hope of recovering her health — because she prayed faithfully — at once the divine compassion, delaying nothing of her petition according to her faith, delivered her from all her infirmity through the glorious martyr’s merits.

Chapter Seventeen: Of a sick woman to whom the holy martyr appeared in a dream: how she was restored to health according to his word. #

¹ Nor must this be handed over to silence or oblivion — that in the same dwelling-place of the holy king and martyr Oswin, that is Tynemouth, a certain other matron of innocent life, living laudably in a vow of widowhood for many days, was counted worthy to be gladdened by a vision of this kind. For when one day, touched by a grievous sickness, she began to be vehemently ill, led by simple womanly counsel she cast a threefold lot as to where in the church of Saint Mary the Mother of God she should pass the night, that she might the sooner be freed from the sickness that assailed her. It fell out therefore by the lot’s indication that she should turn aside to keep vigil in the church of that same town. But the following night, remaining at home on account of the sickness’s annoyance, when she had given her limbs to sleep, the most blessed king and martyr Oswin appeared to her, in face, voice and habit wondrously gracious, saying thus: “Why did you choose elsewhere — if the lot fell so — to seek your safety, rather than at my tomb, when you ought neither to have cast lots about it at all nor to have hoped better from another place? For here you have both the altar of the glorious Mother of God which you had purposed to seek elsewhere, and the presence of my body. For I am the king and martyr Oswin, who suffice to intercede for you with God.” At these words the woman, scarcely bearing the brightness of the unfamiliar vision, seemed to answer him thus with trembling voice and tearful sighs: “I have sinned, my lord; I confess I have sinned. Have mercy on your wretched handmaid.” And he said: “This counsel of your indiscreet simplicity displeases me greatly. Know therefore that now you shall by no means die, yet you shall suffer the hard scourges of the present affliction. But when by God’s clemency you begin to fare better, see that you come to the church in which my body rests and keep the night wholly in vigil before my burial-place with devotion; and there you shall receive full health of body.” And at these words he was withdrawn from the woman’s presence. But the woman, weeping and wailing as though at the blessed martyr’s disappearance, as usually happens in dreams, groaned heavily; she was roused by the household, and being asked what was the matter, related what she had seen. Therefore, when a few days had passed, as she had heard, recovering from her infirmity she was careful to pay the due vows of devotion to God and the holy martyr; and she afterwards had many days of life and health in that same town of which we have spoken.

Chapter Eighteen: How a certain priest, from the stench which the gore of a wounded man exhaled, fell into sickness and blindness together, and received sight and health before his bier. #

¹ A certain priest named Osbern once held the office of vicar in the church of Tynemouth, and afterwards was minister of the chapel of Horton. At the time then when he celebrated divine service in Tynemouth, he went one day to visit one of his parishioners whose head was pierced by a deadly wound; and sitting before the wounded man, who was scarcely drawing his last breath, since he could not heal the body he strove at least to heal the soul. And while he addressed him with words of exhortation to confess his sins, suddenly the man who had first inflicted the wound ran up carried by fury and, with the sword which he held drawn and unsheathed, redoubled the wound in the same place; and neither fearing God nor reverencing man, in the presence of the priest sitting there, hastened the death of the dying man. Soon the receptacle of the brain being broken, the skull sent out in abundance a dark vapour and a putrid stench, which at once covered Osbern’s eyes as it were with a scale of blindness and breathed out an intolerable corruption among his other senses, depriving him of the use of nearly all of them. The crowd standing by, seeing and grieving, seized the priest — held fast as he was — and drawing him away from the corrupted air carried him with all speed to the chamber of his own lodging. There, lying for the space of three days, he was tormented by perpetual blindness and continual sickness of all his limbs. And the physicians despairing, he lay as though in extremity. To whom his mother is said to have poured out such words of healthful exhortation: “Wretched son, why do you spend all your substance on physicians, when you have present with you Saint Oswin, the king and martyr, your lord — the best of physicians? He requires not money but the faith of the sick. Remember how many and how great benefits of healing he most readily bestows even on foreigners and unknown peoples; and believe that to you, his own servant — unless a scant faith should prove unworthy — he will not deny what he grants to every nation that trusts in him, with a pity as ready as it is swift.” At length assenting to these and like admonitions of his mother, the sick man ordered himself to be carried to the holy martyr’s church and to be laid before the saint’s altar; where both he who was carried and those who carried him pressed on with instant prayers, and with much constancy alike of prayers and of faith assailed the holy king and martyr Oswin for the health of the despairing Osbern, and wearied him with devout urgency. At length all, wearied with prayers and continual vigils, fell asleep there — except Osbern, whom unceasing pain did not permit to indulge in sleep. He, as he was destitute of sight and feeble in all his other limbs, feeling his way directed his steps to the eastern part of the shrine in which the saint rests and came to it; and more devoutly embracing the feet of the image of the holy king, he ceased not to kiss them and to weep over them, saying to the saint — in a voice indeed rather childish but with a man’s presumption of faith: “These your feet in the image, which I have not deserved to touch in very truth, I will not let go until you restore me to the choice of health, most gracious king and martyr Oswin.” And at these words, as it were scales fell from his eyes, and he received the sight now lost for fifteen days; and all the trouble of his body, like dust cast into the wind, disappeared. And when his people at home had now awakened, he returned home glad and whole; and the virtue of the holy martyr so mercifully experienced in himself he made known to all whom he could.

Chapter Nineteen: Of a certain prisoner delivered through his merits. #

¹ In the time of Stephen king of England and of German prior of Tynemouth, the miracle I relate happened. The blessed king and martyr Oswin had a certain boy skilled in the art of fishing named Leowric. Once, the herring season pressing, he directed the holy martyr’s ship to Scarborough for fishing; and because he had slackened his nets in the taking of fish and had taken little, while he made some stay there, Ranulf earl of Chester, coming early one morning, broke into that town with an armed band and laid it waste with plunder. So among the others Leowric was taken and led in chains to Malton on the vigil of the apostles Simon and Jude. Now when he who had captured him was reclining with his men on that same vigil and refreshing himself and his men with a repast of meats, Leowric and the companions held captive with him abominated the dishes of flesh. The tyrant therefore, indignant, ordered fishes to be set before them and said to them: “Eat now and be filled, for I swear by heaven and the powers of heaven that you shall taste nothing from now on until the utmost of your ransom is agreed with me.” And when they had been fed he at once commanded them to be stripped of their garments and bound naked the more harshly in the stocks. Their clothes indeed were granted to him who occupied them. There they spent a whole week of fasting. Then torments raged upon torments: bound with ropes by their hands they were hung from a beam, taken down from it and cut with sharpest scourges, and at last bound again in the stocks. Amid these things Leowric ceased not to cry out: “Saint Oswin, help me!” The tyrant, warming himself at the fire and chancing to hear Leowric crying out Saint Oswin unceasingly, moved with weariness, cast the staff he held in his hand at him, and restraining him from crying rebuked him, saying: “What is it, wretch, what is it that you cry, burdening our ears with the invocation of I know not what Oswin? Who is this Oswin, by whose aid you believe you can be freed without the intervention of money? Restrain your tongue from garrulous clamour, nor rouse us this night from sleep by your pleading.” The following night, while all slept, a dignified man comely in face and attire stood by the sleeping Leowric and said to him: “Why do you sit here, Leowric? Why do you linger here? Rise quickly and hasten speedily to my church and to your native soil.” To whom Leowric is said to have given this answer: “Reverend lord, I cannot rise by myself, because my hands are bound behind my back and my feet are held fast in the wood.” To whom Saint Oswin said: “Rise quickly, lest you die.” And at these words he disappeared. So Leowric, awaking and made the gladder by the vision, found his hands free of their loosened bonds. But fearing lest what he had heard had been heard by the gaolers, he bent his arms behind his back and slept again. For he did not think he had seen it in a vision but in real converse. And a second time Saint Oswin stood by him, rebuking him and saying as though moved: “Why have you not obeyed my commands? Have not the bonds of your hands been loosed? Rise therefore and take the staff which the tyrant cast at you last evening.” And drawing his feet most easily from the stocks, he took in his hand the staff that had been cast at him and came to a certain doorway, on the far side of which a boy, keeper of the horses, lay. From whose door he gently shook the bolt; but because he was naked and the harshness of the cold did not permit him to go naked — not love of spoil but the necessity of urgent flight, which could not be accomplished naked — he snatched a sailor’s hood from the sleeping boy; clothed in which Leowric took the unknown road and returned the more swiftly to his native soil; and he gave manifold thanks to God and the holy martyr Oswin for his wondrous deliverance, and through the whole province so wonderful a report was in a short time spread abroad by swift relating.

Chapter Twenty: How a certain man was judged unworthy to carry his bier. #

¹ It happened once that Northumbria was burdened with a longer drought, and that prophetic word seemed to threaten those peoples: “You have sown much and brought in little.” So the people of the province gathered together and fled to the accustomed estates of the blessed king and martyr Oswin, asking the brethren of the place to aid them in the pinch of so great a need and to carry forth the holy martyr’s body to ask for rain. So when the solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension drew near, by agreement they bore the holy martyr’s body in procession; and to bear so holy a burden the crowds that had gathered bent themselves in turns — not that the weary might be refreshed with rest, but that the devout might glory in bearing the saint. There ran up among the others a certain criminal and put himself under the holy burden. The indignant saint fixed himself with so great a weight that the bearers could in no wise go forward from the place in which the criminal had put himself beneath the saint. So by someone’s shrewdness the cause of the unusual weight was discovered, and the criminal removed, the martyr suffered himself to be carried with the accustomed ease; and to the judgement already shown mercy was joined — the whole province being watered when the flood of the longed-for rain followed in abundance.

Chapter Twenty-One: How a certain monk was made whole from pain of the teeth and a swelling of the throat before his tomb. #

¹ In the monastery of the often-mentioned most holy king and martyr Oswin, a certain brother named Symeon of Huntingdon was sometimes more sharply tormented by pain of the teeth and a horrible swelling of the throat; and he passed fasting days and sleepless nights for the anguish of the pain, which, growing daily, gave the wretched brother not even a moment’s rest. He knew not what to do or where to turn, since trials of all medicines could not ease the pain even for an hour. At length he fled to the protection of his patron and, more devoutly kissing his little shrine and pressing it to the swelling of his throat, he begged the more instantly for his health and at once obtained his desire. For the pain of the teeth fled at once at the kiss of the shrine, and the swelling of the throat subsided at its touch; and he made known to the brethren his so speedy recovery both by the cheerfulness of his face and by the vanished swelling of his throat, and kindled them all into most fervent praise and love of the holy martyr.

Chapter Twenty-Two: How at the touch of the stone that bears the shrine of the holy body, Prior Ruelend felt himself freed from the sickness of his hand. #

¹ By the report of the religious brethren who were present, I learned what I relate. In the monastery of Saint Oswin king and martyr there was a certain prior named Ruelend, whose hand an intolerable sickness had seized. This sickness, growing day by day, had denied all use of that hand; and the sinews being numbed and refusing the office of the joints, it had long suspended the man from the celebration of mass. Grieving therefore that he was defrauded of his accustomed devotion by the occasion of his sickness, he went to the holy martyr’s casket; and pouring forth prayer more instantly, he embraced the stone upon which his casket was set; and so immediately did health follow that he did not remove his hand until, through the glorious martyr’s merits, it was fully restored to its former health.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Of the quenching of a material fire, and of a brother delivered from that burning by him. #

¹ In the time of this same man Ruelend, it happened that a certain house was set on fire and reduced to ashes, which, serving the use of the household servants’ lodging and set in a more retired place, was next to the brothers’ refectory and adjoining the dormitory. And both the same house and the dormitory were thatched. And there was no small wind coming partly from the west; and the burning house, set to the south, had to the north, scarcely two paces from it, the refectory and the whole body of the monastery; and to the east the dormitory, to which, as has been said, it was both adjoining in place and most like in the thatch of its roof. It was night, and the brothers had already performed the office of matins and had returned to their beds to rest; and one of the brothers, entering the dormitory more privately and amazed that it was filled with smoke, looked out through the window and discovered that the adjoining house was on fire, and signified it to the brothers hastily, by a sign rather than by a word. Leaping from their beds and running together to the fire, they see the whole house burning within, the flame already licking the master beam and penetrating the roof; and they find neither what to do nor how to check the fire’s onslaught. Yet part of them leapt back and sprang onto the dormitory roof and fought with the fire there; part ran wandering to and fro and snatched what they could of the church’s furniture from the blaze; part returned to the holy king and martyr Oswin and pressed on in prayer. And Prior Ruelend and Sub-prior Alcuin carried out the saint’s casket in which his reverend body is placed and set it down in the cloister garth. And there some of the brothers, praying with tears, implored the aid of God alone and of the holy martyr. The prior himself now poured out prayers to the holy martyr with rising tears, now uttered such prayers in a loud voice: “Saint Oswin, what are you doing? Do you permit your house to be consumed by fire? Do you make me, given over to your service, guilty of crime? For this event of misery will be laid to my carelessness. If you are a saint, if you are a friend of God, come to our aid in this utmost need and set yourself against the danger. Why do you delay? Why do you linger? Neither will you move from this place, nor I. The fire will find us together, together it will reduce us to ashes. If you do not spare your monastery, spare your body. If you do not spare us because we have sinned, yet spare us confessing that we have sinned.” These and like things he said weeping and wailing, and ordered the Lord’s body to be brought quickly. And when it had been brought out, turning to Saint Oswin he said: “See our God Jesus Christ. We do not deserve to be heard, nor do we presume to beg Christ; in the pinch of necessity show yourself our patron and beg Christ for us, that what we cannot obtain by our merits we may obtain by your intercession.” He spoke; and the wind became nothing, and the fire which had already burned many stones in the dormitory and shaken some from the wall touched indeed the wooden windows and the dry thatch of the roof but inflicted no harm. And a wooden porch roofed with straw, joined to the three buildings — namely the burning house, the dormitory and the refectory — the devouring flame consumed; and making the truth of the miracle more certain, it leapt upon the houses to which the porch was joined but from two of them recoiled as though beaten back. And as though understanding over which it was given power and over which it was utterly denied, when the porch was burned the flame, as though obedient to the saint, consumed the stones in the dormitory and refectory by nature’s right but spared the wood and thatch by the gift of grace. Marvels succeed to marvels. A certain brother named Richard, sitting on the dormitory roof for defence, is incautiously struck by someone’s cast of water and cast down to the depths, but is hurt in nothing. Again he springs back onto the same roof and, the fire blazing, sliding suddenly through its midst and penetrating to the ground, is enveloped in the midst of the fire but is not hurt even then. What more? Only the house which had been built for the use of guests but was now usurped for an office of abuse, as though guilty and conscious of excesses, is given over to the fire and reduced to nothing. And because things seen seem more certain than things heard, being asked by the brethren to commit these things to writing for the profit of posterity, before I complied with their request I came to the place where the now-burned house had stood, which I too had seen with my eyes, and I saw the manifest traces of the miracle. For I saw the wall and certain wooden windows of the dormitory blackened by the fire’s working, and places in the wall empty of stones which the fiery force had crumbled and cast out. And I presumed to write the more confidently of what I had not seen but had heard from faithful men, because by seeing the same signs I had made faith for my hearing.

Chapter Twenty-Four: How a certain man falling from the brow of a hill with oxen yoked to a waggon was delivered from peril of death by him. #

¹ In the days of the same Prior Ruelend, the abundance of a fertile harvest had filled all the barns of the holy king and martyr Oswin of Tynemouth, and a copious crop still remained. So they built a no small stack under the open air on the height of a certain rock which overhangs the ocean. As is the custom of the province, the church’s serfs — whom they call Boons in their mother tongue — by right of the work laid upon them, bring the harvest in their waggons to the stack begun and compel it to rise quickly from the abundance of the gathered crop. Among them, one named Edmund, while he was officiously hastening to unload his waggon — the restless oxen stepping back by some accident — was given, together with the waggon laden with corn, over the precipice. Seeing himself exposed to the peril of death, all hope of escape laid aside, he invoked Saint Oswin to his aid with a tearful voice — and so did all the household who were present at so miserable a spectacle. A wondrous thing: he plunged down from the overhanging rock and was dashed on the stones and, as though his brain were shaken out, was dead before he reached the bottom — yet neither he nor his oxen felt any hurt. The amazed crowd of onlookers ran up; and the servants hastened to carry Edmund, whom they believed had expired, away for burial. They come to the bottom of the precipice and find Edmund and his oxen unharmed, without any breaking of limbs. They lift their voices to the stars for joy and bring them back to the heights as though restored to life, proclaiming through the whole neighbourhood the mighty works of God and the holy martyr.

Chapter Twenty-Five: How the reciter and composer of his miracles, struck by a sudden sickness, began to sleep while praying before his tomb, but on waking found himself healed; and how another, admonished by him to that end, was likewise delivered from the sickness that held him. #

¹ I could rightly be convicted of ingratitude if, in writing the signs of virtue celebrated in others, I should overshadow with the cloud of silence what the divine power worked in me through the holy king and martyr Oswin. I was once for a whole year and more in the cloister of Tynemouth by the free choice of my own will, that there, removed from the ecclesiastical affairs in which I was entangled at Saint Albans, I might the more freely bewail my sins and write the more carefully what I had conceived in my mind by the benefit of the leisure granted me. Now it happened at the Easter solemnity that I was burdened somewhat grievously by the disease commonly called gout, in that part of the body where the spine of the back joins the kidneys. And as the pain grew worse, on the fourth night of the solemnity it so prevailed that I withdrew myself from the common celebration of the night office. But having completed the sacred vigils outside the choir as well as I could, I was stung by intolerable pricks of pain; and impatient of the pain, creeping rather than walking, I came to the holy martyr’s tomb. And because I could neither stand nor sit nor lie for anguish of spirit, rolling there I anxiously finished my matins to the glorious Virgin Mary. Moreover I confessed to the holy martyr from the affection of my heart that I suffered for my deserving sins, and yet I begged more for the health of my body than of my soul. What more? Fed on the bread of tears and watered with the instant drink of prayer, I returned to my bed, tormented then not at intervals but with continuous pain, and wearied with the tedium of suffering at last I fell asleep. But awaking shortly, I felt no pain at all. The gout was so wholly and entirely dissipated that no traces of it remained either in my kidneys or in the spine of my back. Rising at once, I who the day before had been bent went upright and alert; and I went to celebrate the divine office, from which I had been suspended for three days — the brethren amazed and giving thanks to the holy martyr, who as though in the twinkling of an eye had restored one so grievously detained so ready for all duties. After no little time had passed, one of our household was sick even to death; and the physicians despaired, because all the signs of death ran together in the sick man. I however, fleeing to the accustomed refuge, begged the holy king and martyr with a flood of tears — though far removed from the place by the space of many miles — and the sick man recovered on the very day on which things necessary for his funeral were being dutifully prepared.

Chapter Twenty-Six: How on his feast-day, when all others were free from servile work, a certain clerk’s corn, which he had heaped into his barn, was consumed by fire together with the house. #

¹ At the time when I presided over the monastery of the holy Mother of God at Wymondham as prior, there happened in that town the miracle I set out to relate. On the day of the passion of the holy king and martyr Oswin, since the serenity of weather was very great, a certain subdeacon Roger was ardently sweating with all his household at gathering his crops; and in his field, with all his household array around him, he heaped up a stack of the best barley of his harvest. Without delay, on the following night the blessed martyr Oswin sent a sulphureous fire into the stack and reduced it to ashes; but the dry stubble set outside the stack, though very near, he neither touched nor harmed in any way. The next day the neighbours hastening to their harvests saw the stack burning and were witnesses to the people; and in a short time the report of what had happened to Roger’s barley was spread abroad in common talk through all the neighbouring towns — a man whom all knew to be perverse in mind, dissolute in act, and in nothing deferring to his order either in habit or in conduct; and therefore they glorified God for his misfortune.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: How a certain man, seized with sickness for a dove which he presumptuously killed beneath his bier, was made whole when he promised satisfaction, neglected what he had vowed, and died of the returning sickness. #

¹ A certain boy of the household of Robert de Gorham, abbot of Saint Albans, named Henry, had once made some stay in the service of Geoffrey prior of Tynemouth. One day he took a bow and went out to exercise himself at whatever marks came his way; and he came to the monastery of the holy king and martyr Oswin and drew his bow; and shooting an arrow, he broke the wing of a dove lurking in one of the monastery’s openings. Feeling itself hurt, the dove — an opening in the middle of the wall giving it passage — entered the interior of the church and, as though seeking refuge, hid itself beneath the saint’s shrine. Now the youth, glad at the innocent bird’s wound, flew with swift step to the monastery gates; and coming to the saint’s tomb he found and took the dove and, showing no reverence to the saint to whom it had fled, killed it in his very sanctuary and carried it off with him. But divine vengeance was not wanting, which at once deprived the youth of the sight of one eye. And after a small interval, with grievous fevers he returned to Saint Albans from which he had come, as though by change of places he could escape the assault of the fevers. There he was held more harshly for two and a half months and seemed to have come to extremity; when the holy king and martyr Oswin stood in a vision by a religious woman who was passing sleepless nights in the sick man’s service, asking her: “Do you think, woman, that the dissolution of the body threatens this sick man?” “Surely, lord, lord,” she answered, “for all the signs of death run together in him.” To whom the saint: “And do you know why he is thus irremediably tormented?” “Not at all, lord,” she said. “Because at Tynemouth he violently killed and carried off a dove which had fled to the refuge of my tomb. For I am Saint Oswin, who am known to rest at Tynemouth. But if he would recover from the fever under which he labours, let him repent of the temerity he presumed; and coming to my tomb whose peace he violated, let him keep my indignation from him by fitting satisfaction.” Saying this the saint disappeared, and the woman, awakened, related the vision in order to the sick youth. Repenting at once of the deed, he humbly undertook to make satisfaction to the holy martyr, and the fever left him at once. Made whole, forgetful of his promise or dissembling it, he neglected to put into execution the vow he had vowed. Seized again with sickness, he fell into a wasting sickness; and at last a spreading cancer seized his upper parts and tore out from his head the eye of which he had been deprived of sight at Tynemouth. And so, failing little by little, he was brought to his end; and he who would not when he could began to will to satisfy Saint Oswin when he could not. Let the hearer of this miracle mark with what severity Saint Oswin burns against those who drive out men fleeing to his peace — he who with so great strictness avenged even a bird taken from his sanctuary.

Chapter Twenty-Eight: How a woman, ungrateful and unbelieving for the health she had received through him, fell sick again; but believing and trusting, soon received her health. #

¹ In the city of Durham a certain widow, labouring under a mortal sickness, lay in her little bed nearly despairing; at length she turned to the holy king and martyr Oswin and trusted greatly in his compassion. At last she vowed a vow to the saint and was at once restored to the health she desired. But when the holy king’s passion drew near, the woman was girding herself to pay her vow and was preparing to visit the saint’s memory. And one of her neighbours, an instrument of Satan, suggested to her that she had not been cured by the merits of the holy martyr Oswin and therefore was not bound to pay the vow. So she made as though not to visit the saint, and at once that very day her face was miserably twisted back to her neck, and her latter state was made worse than the first. Her face being at last filled with ignominy, she began to seek the name of the Lord and the protection of Saint Oswin, for whose contempt she felt she was miserably suffering, and strove, though late, to repair the contempt by penance. What more? At length, by the counsel and aid of her people, she was brought to the saint’s memory; and there, three days spent in vigils and prayers before the martyr’s shrine, she deserved to receive the integrity of her health, to the praise and glory of Him who said: “I will strike and I will heal”; and who exhorts by the prophet to pay vows, saying: “Vow and pay to the Lord your God.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine: How the hangings of his altar remained untouched by a fire. #

¹ A certain merchant and citizen of Newcastle named Faraman loved the blessed king and martyr Oswin affectionately. In all his doings, trusting in the glorious martyr’s aid, he prospered. Once, purposing to send a ship laden with various merchandise to the southern English, he first visited the holy martyr as was his custom; and commending himself and his goods to his protection, he offered a no small candle, wound in a coil, lighted at the sacred altars. Then turning aside into the sacristan’s chamber with his companions, he gave himself to refreshment at the sacristan’s request. Now the keepers of the monastery, busied in his service and refreshed together with him, forgot the candle burning on the altar. At length one of them, remembering the neglect of the unextinguished light, ran up quickly; and found the candle lying as it was, all coiled, with the flame still unconsumed on every side, and hastily shook it off the altar. But seeing the altar linen untouched by the smell and hurt of the fire, struck by the novelty of the miracle he called the other keepers; and made the wonders known to them not only in words but proved them true by the inspection of their eyes; and in a short time the merit of the holy martyr came to the knowledge of many by so amazing a deed. This miracle indeed, as far as the surface of the story goes, is no less than that which Gideon deserved to see — the fleece wet on the dry threshing-floor.

Chapter Thirty: How a certain man who was bound by his office to seize his oxen, struck blind, ran wandering to and fro among them and could not see the oxen he touched. #

¹ The most powerful of the powerful men of Northumbria, Odinel de Umfraville, compelled his neighbours by undue exactions to repair the buildings of his castle; and among the rest especially the tenants of the holy king and martyr Oswin. For the powerful of the world seem to think they may freely do against the Church of God whatever they will, because she bears the person of a ward and is as though without a guardian. And impunity fostered the daring of so great a crime — on the one hand because Odinel was exceeding powerful, on the other because he had joined his daughter in marriage to him who exercised the royal magistracy in England, by whose authority he presumed such things. Those who feared his fear came together for the work imposed; but the tenants of the holy martyr, because they were free from such edicts by royal munificence, would by no means consent to come. Odinel was the more insolently angered. And he commanded with a threat that royal officers be sent to compel them to come. But because whatever injury is inflicted on his servants is believed to redound upon the holy martyr, those who had first been sent deferred to the saint; and suspending their threats, they amiably set forth the great man’s edict to them and modestly added a few words of the threatened menaces. But not even so did the saint’s men consent to go. Now there was in the town of Corbridge a royal bailiff who neither feared God nor reverenced Saint Oswin, to whom it was suggested by Odinel how the dignity of Saint Oswin would redound to the contempt of his command, saying: “All my neighbours, whether drawn by love or compelled by fear, come to the rebuilding of my castle — except the men of the monks of Tynemouth, who lurk here under my wings; on whom if I lay hands, there is none to snatch them away. Therefore I charge you by the faith you owe the king, that you invade the possessions of the husbandmen of Willington with a violent hand and drive them into my castle.” He at once, taking with him Richard and Nicholas, who were also the king’s officers but God-fearing, came in the spirit of his fury to Willington, Saint Oswin’s town, not far distant from the castle’s site. Now a long-standing custom of this kind has the force of law in England: that if any default in paying or in doing what has been justly imposed on them, they are compelled first by the seizure of their movables to perform what is imposed; secondly by that of their lands; thirdly by the imprisonment of their persons. And likewise a custom of no less vigour: that if the lord has defaulted on the imposition, the exactor must resort to the serfs’ own stock before invading the said possession. But that officer on whose tyranny Odinel relied, deferring neither to the public laws nor conforming to the institute or custom of the realm, came, as has been said, to Willington, about to loose his hands in seizing whatever movables first met him. Those who had come with him, Richard and Nicholas, God-fearing men, forbade him from the holy martyr’s own herd; opposing now the title of the same custom, now reverence for the holy king and martyr. But he, refreshed with his companions, in contempt of the saint none the less borne on by the same fury as before, affirmed with an oath that he would seize at random and without choice whatever should first occur. And it came to pass that they came together to the pastures where the lord’s oxen of that town were grazing; and while Richard and Nicholas saw the oxen grazing and the boy threatening them, and heard also the hideous dog barking horribly at them alone, the leader of the impious seizure himself neither saw the oxen nor heard the dog. Now they went to and fro in those very pastures and returned often, and drew so near to the grazing herd that they were touched by the feet of the riders, and the oxen were driven from the seeker’s path by the nudges of Richard and Nicholas; yet they were not seen by the royal officer either going or returning. That blindness assuredly — which the Greeks call aurisia or abrasia, which had struck the Sodomites so that they could not find the door of Lot’s house — had touched this minister of iniquity; and for a time it had suspended him from the sight and hearing alike, not of all things that could be seen and heard — for he both saw and heard his companions — but of those to whom he had purposed to do harm, Saint Oswin obtaining it. And when they had gone out of the holy martyr’s land, “I wonder,” said that bailiff, “where the herds or flocks of this town have gone. Have you by chance revealed to anyone the cause of our coming? Have the herds we came to seize been removed from the pastures by some foreknowledge of ours?” But those who were in his company said: “Of what town do you speak? Have we not already gone about five hundred paces from Willington? Did you not see the lord’s oxen grazing in their pastures? Did you not see the reddish boy threatening them, and hear the dog with him barking sharply at you alone?” “Not at all,” he said, “did I either see or hear what you say.” But they, supposing that he had dissembled it all, on the third or fourth day, in the county court held at Newcastle, met more privately and strictly about these things; and he testified with an oath that he had neither seen nor heard what they declared. And at once this word which the Lord had worked was divulged through the county, then through all Northumbria; and it showed it to us God-fearing for the glorifying of God, but to the obstinate for the fearing of God and the reverencing of the holy king and martyr Oswin. Now the horrid bailiff did not afterwards seek again plunder or distraint, so to speak, in the holy martyr’s land; indeed, for some time he abstained from the very sight of the saint’s monastery, until, regarded by divine grace, he came to himself; and coming to Tynemouth, reconciled to the saint, he was made his servant. I received this miracle from the monks of the place who were in the body of the monastery when this word resounded and was held famous in common talk, not only among them but among the neighbouring monasteries, cross-roads, castles and cities.

Chapter Thirty-One: Of a pilgrim who lay sick at Newcastle; how in a dream, at Saint Aidan’s bidding, he set out for Tynemouth and in his church, beneath his bier, was delivered from a most grievous pain in his bowels. #

¹ A certain man born in the district of Norwich, when he was returning to England from Jerusalem for the third time, suffered — perhaps from the refreshment of unaccustomed food — a sickness of the bowels with intolerable griping pains, not at continuous hours but at intervals of time. And when the hour of torment came after seven or fifteen days, he filled not only the house in which he lodged but the neighbourhood with anxious cries. This man, setting out for Saint Andrew who is venerated in Scotland, came to Newcastle which is set on the river Tyne; and turned aside into the house of a certain citizen named Daniel for lodging. This man had a wife, a woman wonderfully devoted about the constant service of guests, who had built a lodging apart, suitable for the reception of guests. Into it she had brought the sick man and ministered to his needs with her own hands. Now the following night, the hour of the gripings coming, tormented the wretched man more heavily than usual, and for anguish of spirit he gave no rest to his most bitter crying. So Daniel’s wife, whose house it was, coming to the sick man and consoling him with kind speech, at last covered him with cloths; and after his long troubles he began to sleep, the pain being mitigated. And in a vision there stood by him a man of venerable face saying to him: “Do you wish to recover from the sickness under which you labour?” “I do, lord,” he said, “and I ardently desire it.” And he said: “Rising in the morning, hasten to the holy king and martyr Oswin, that on the next third feria you may deserve to be present at his Finding, and by his merits there be restored to the health you desire.” Then the sick man said: “Who are you, lord, who promise me such good things?” “What is it to you,” he said, “about me? Go and believe, and you shall be healed.” “I beg you, lord, do not be angry,” he said, “but make known your name, that by the authority of your name I may presume upon the solidity of the promise.” Then at length he said: “I am Aidan, once the bishop of the holy king and martyr Oswin, and his devoted clerk at the present day. And because you suffer in belly and head alike, that you may be secure of the cure of your belly to be granted through the blessed Oswin, I myself drive away the pain of your head by my touch.” And saying this, with fingers contracted he tightly squeezed the sufferer’s nose and disappeared. Now the sick guest was shaken out of sleep by the squeezer’s office, and was drenched with a discharge of abundant blood bursting forth from his nostrils. And the maid appointed to his service, calling him with a louder cry, said: “Call your master and mistress.” They having come in to him, he said: “Call the priest of this parish and the elders of this town, and in their hearing I will tell the course of my vision.” Those called are present and hear him telling the wonders of God. And the telling of the vision being ended, he said: “Of the holy King Oswin I had heard some things long since, but never before had even the name of Saint Aidan the bishop come to me. Yet by his benefit my head no longer aches, and of the cure of the gripings which I suffer in my belly, to be granted through the blessed Oswin, I do not doubt — but I do not see how I can come to him. For I cannot go on foot and I have no conveyance to carry me.” Hearing this, one of those standing round said: “I will carry you with me in my little boat to Saint Oswin for nothing.” And that same day, that is the second feria, sailing they came to Tynemouth on the day of the holy Finding. But at the hour when the brothers were sitting in chapter, they came to the holy martyr’s tomb; where, after he who had come sick had prayed long and devoutly — as though dry reeds were being broken in him, his belly giving out a crackling again and again to the hearing of the crowd standing round, both the church’s ministers and the others who had gathered for the solemn day — that noise was spread abroad and turned them to wonder. But he, springing up whole amid the thousand, began to proclaim what the crackling as of dry wood had signified, saying: “See, by the grace of God and His holy martyr I am restored to full health with such alacrity that it seems to me I could fly.” And he himself, after receiving his health, at once resumed his journey to Saint Andrew with great joy. These things certain of the monks of Saint Oswin told me as I write, who had received them from those who were present.

Chapter Thirty-Two: How a certain monk, through the Book of his Life and Miracles, long vexed with sore eyes and pain even to the point of blindness, received the fullest health. #

¹ Gervase, once abbot of Westminster, son of the same Stephen king of England, in Lent time, that he might the more freely give himself to monastic quiet, came from his town to Hertford; and there with the monks of the place, by permission of the abbot of Saint Albans, stayed through the whole of Lent. Now it happened at that time that one of his brothers named Henry laboured under a grievous trouble of the eyes. He, trying certain kinds of eye-salves, bought time but did not remove the cloud from his eyes. Now there was at that time a certain brother in that college of monks who loved the holy king and martyr Oswin affectionately and had with him a little book containing his passion, his finding and some of his miracles. Coming to Henry, sorely burdened with the suffering of his eyes, he said: “If you wish to recover more quickly from so great a pain, believing, lay this little book upon your eyes and trust in the merit of the holy martyr of whom it is written, and you shall recover.” He believed and touched it, and in the twinkling of an eye the pain of his eyes vanished.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Of a paralysed girl. #

¹ When it pleased the heavenly Majesty to renew the frequent and wondrous miracles which had long ago been worked through the merits of His beloved soldier and unconquered king and martyr Oswin, it happened — divine grace visiting us — that a certain renewal of miracles came suddenly in our own times. As the day therefore of the same king and martyr Oswin’s solemnity drew near, on which his passion was celebrated, many from different places gathered to his tomb, seeking medicine both of body and of soul. Among whom a certain girl of about sixteen years, born in the town of Tynemouth, the only daughter of a certain poor man named Orm, came to the saint’s tomb on the vigil of the holy martyr, creeping on hands and knees and dragging miserably behind her the staff on which she had sometimes supported herself; for three years she had so laboured under the disease of paralysis that she had lost all below the navel. While therefore, set in that place, she frequently and devoutly implored the holy martyr’s aid, in the night, while the brothers were singing the matin hymns, she felt the healing; she arose and, before the people who were present, began to walk. And taking up the staff by which she had sometimes supported her feeble limbs, giving thanks to God and the holy martyr, she offered it upon the saint’s own altar and then returned unharmed to her father’s house.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Of a boy who had fallen. #

¹ At that same solemnity a certain countryman of Amble brought his son, who had now completed his eighth year, to the same church; and laying him before the holy martyr’s tomb, while many stood by and heard, he said: “This is my son, who two years ago now fell so badly that, his limbs bruised, he has never since been able either to stand or to walk. Him I have brought here for the sake of recovering health, and I commend him to God and Saint Oswin.” So speaking, he made his prayer and departed, leaving his son before the holy martyr’s tomb. And now the evening hour had come when the father, anxious for his son, returned to the church and found him sleeping. But suddenly awaking, he began to grow pale, to tremble and to weep so bitterly as though he were pressed by most grievous blows. Those who stood by, thinking this happened on account of the father’s presence, asked him to withdraw a little. But when the boy did not even so cease from tears, certain of the brothers drew near to visit him. One of whom, moved by mercy above the rest, purposed to go to him and give him the apples he had in hand. But it was signified to him not to do so, because the boy was in agony and near to health. Without delay — the boy’s face not yet dried from tears — suddenly in the sight of all who were present he began to run to and fro in tripping steps and to mingle in play with the boys who were there. At that time the same prior of that place, Hervey, was kept in bed by sickness. Hearing the novelty of the miracle, he ordered the boy to be brought to him; and seeing him whole and unharmed, he commanded food and drink to be given him. And giving thanks to God, he ordered the brothers to sing the Te Deum and to ring the bells.

Chapter Thirty-Five: Of a blind girl. #

¹ There was also present at this joyful solemnity a certain girl named Matilda of Slevelei, who had been blind from infancy. Her mother had brought her to the holy martyr’s tomb and, leaving her there, had returned home. Now the girl’s eyes were swollen and sprinkled with blood, and so deformed that just as she for blindness could see no one, so no one for the deformity could bear to look upon her. She lost her blindness and received her sight; and she announced it to the people present with a clear voice and proved the truth of the thing by sure signs. After receiving her health she remained some days in the court, diligently ministering what was laid upon her. At length after some days she went to her mother and the rest of her kin and made them glad for her health.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Of a girl who suffered from a flux of blood. #

¹ On that same day also, at the same solemnity of mass, a certain Roger of Middleshire was present with his only daughter, who for many past years had laboured under a flux of blood. While she lay before the holy martyr’s tomb imploring his aid, she suddenly began to complain, to be distressed and to utter pitiable cries. And it was a miserable spectacle for those who saw her. For the cries she uttered now showed the pain of her mind. Nor could she rest for even one hour in any position. For if she turned on her right side, at once she was driven to the left; and so, wherever she turned, she was tossed to and fro as though by violent hands of men. And when she was now nearly failing from the pain of body and the distress of voice, at length by the holy martyr’s merits she rested for a little, and soon declared to the people present that she had been made perfectly whole. And so, her health received, giving thanks to God and the holy martyr, she returned unharmed to her own with her father and the rest of her kin.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Of a certain deaf man. #

¹ Within this solemnity another joyful miracle happened, delightful to hear. For a certain poor man of Togisden came with the rest who sought bodily healing to the same solemnity. Now he was deaf and had lost the hearing of both ears for many years; so he kept vigil with a candle through the night at the glorious martyr’s tomb. But feeling no benefit, he added a second night to the like work. And when he felt no remedy even so, he added a third also. When on the third night, at the hour when the brothers were present at the matin hymns, watching with open eyes he saw the glorious king and martyr Oswin come forth from the eastern part of the tomb, clothed in royal garments and adorned with a royal crown. Before him went a most beautiful youth clothed in white, carrying in his hands a pail of water and a sprinkler. When the two together had gone once and again round the holy tomb, doing it a third time they came to that place where that deaf poor man was sitting. So both stood still; and the glorious martyr, taking the sprinkler from the hand of him who bore it, held it out to the sick man. And he, quickly bending his head to the left side, offered him his right ear. Into which the saint put the sprinkler and quickly drew it out, and took away the deafness of that ear and passed through. Then that poor man, crying out with tears, said to those standing by: “Look, look, see where my lord Saint Oswin walks.” And repeating the same words he rose, went to the monk who was watching the holy tomb and, holding him by the garments with his left hand, with right hand outstretched he showed him with his finger, saying: “Lord, see where my lord Saint Oswin goes. He just now stood before me and restored to me by His grace the hearing of my right ear.” Those standing by, hearing these things and knowing most certainly that he had been deaf, coming nearer questioned him about many things, to all of which he answered most sanely, and returned together with them to his own.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Of a poor woman who was deaf. #

¹ A certain poor woman also of Boldon, who had lost the hearing of both ears for many past years, came to this solemnity with the rest who had gathered for the sake of healing. While she unweariedly day and night implored the aid of God and the holy martyr, she remained in the same deafness until the seventh day. But God, willing to apply consolation to her patience — when the eighth day of the solemnity came, as she slept weighed down by most heavy sleep the preceding night, the keeper of the monastery began to ring the bell to wake the brothers. At whose sound the woman, awakened, began to wonder that she had recovered her hearing; and thinking that she had received the hearing of one ear only, she stopped her left ear with her finger and heard clearly with the right. And stopping the right ear with the finger of her other hand, she rejoiced that she heard no less clearly with the left. And feeling that she had received the hearing of both ears, she gave thanks to God and the holy martyr for the benefit conferred on her; and the next day she joyfully announced it to the brothers and the people who were present, and returned to her own with exceeding exultation.

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Of a blind woman. #

¹ In the town of Edinburgh there was a certain woman who, her husband now dead, remained alone with an only daughter. She was of no mean substance, but all goods abounded to her even to overflowing. So certain not ignoble youths sought her daughter in marriage, both for her beauty and for hope of the mother’s money. But while the matter was deferred, the mother suddenly lost the light of both eyes. She knows not therefore what to do. At length she calls physicians, and the money she had gathered over many years she spends almost wholly on physicians in a few days — but it profits her nothing. And when for three years and more she had spent in vain almost all she had, leaving the physicians, using by divine inspiration a sounder counsel, she calls her daughter and addresses her thus: “You see, my sweetest daughter, you see that your mother has fallen into blindness and cannot be cured by any of the physicians. Assent therefore to my counsels, and taking part of the money that remains to us, let us go to the glorious martyr Saint Thomas archbishop of Canterbury; and let us beg him that by his prayers he may obtain for me from God what the physicians cannot by their arts.” The daughter assents to her mother’s words, and as quickly as they can they take the road. When they had come therefore to Canterbury and, making offerings before the glorious martyr Thomas’s tomb and pouring forth prayers to God from the heart, on the following night the woman received the light of one eye. She persists still in prayers that the light of the other eye be restored to her. When on the second night, Saint Thomas, clothed in pontifical vestments, stood by her as she slept, saying: “Why do you lie here, woman? Have I not restored to you the light of one eye? What more do you wait for here? For I will not restore you the light of the other eye. But rise quickly and, returning to your own country, go to Tynemouth; and from the advocate of that place, namely the holy king and martyr Oswin, ask the light of the other eye, and without doubt you shall receive it.” So the woman awaking calls her daughter and tells her in order what she had seen and heard in the vision. Without delay, at daybreak they rise and make eagerly for the place where she had been told. And coming before the tomb of the glorious king and martyr Oswin, when prayer and offering had alike been made, that same night the sight of the other eye was restored to the woman, and in the morning she returned home with her daughter.

Chapter Forty: How a certain brother was freed in the saint’s presence from sickness of body and of heart. #

¹ Glorious God, wonderful in His saints, who even now works wonders with the Father, has of late in these days worked salvation, in the merits of His blessed king and martyr Oswin, for a certain brother set in the saint’s presence, whom a troublesome sickness saddened with a double affliction. Which deed we have thought worthy to commit to letters and transmit to posterity, that a later generation may know how worthily this saint is turned to men’s remembrance, whose sacred relics the frequency of signs illustrates with the title of so great veneration. But he who either suppresses the works of the saints in silence or negligently omits them through carelessness is manifestly convicted of ingratitude for God’s benefits: because what brute animals draw from nature as though by understanding, man, capable of sense, overturns in himself against the law of reason. For it is inborn in beasts, though they do not discern it, to love those who love them and to be loved themselves; and to follow those who do them good, so as to show themselves familiar to them in this. But man alone, for the goods he receives from the Lord’s hand, repays God neither with the voice of praise nor with honour. So it is that our sins sometimes hinder the aid of God’s grace, because when we make petition to the names of the saints, what we ask is indeed ready at hand by their merits; but we cannot obtain the effect of our prayer because we ask either other things or otherwise than we ought. The prophet, seeing both, says: “My God, I shall cry by day and You will not hear, and by night, and not to my folly.” In sacred Scripture prosperity is usually represented by day and adversity by night. Those therefore whom prosperity can elate and whom adversity can cast down are not heard in the things they ask, because in the Lord’s eyes the things they ask are counted as asked to their own folly. For if they worthily asked worthy things, without doubt they would obtain the effect of their prayer. Now that brother of whom we speak, neither elated by prosperity nor cast down by adversity, went between the two holding the safest middle course; and, as the event proved, worthily asking worthy things, he obtained through the saint’s merits what he asked. Of him we are witnesses to the people, of whom we relate not things heard but seen, which he endured hard in either man: outwardly detained by a grievous sickness of body, inwardly he laboured under the anguish of a troubled heart. And although to live was Christ for him, yet for anguish of spirit he reckoned death his gain. So this brother, overtaken by a double affliction, a doubled pain suspended him from all appetite for food; and void of all efficacy of taste and delight, for three days he neither ate nor drank. Yet whatever he tasted from the necessity of nature was believed rather to provoke hunger than to check it. Things being so, on the day before the vigil of Saints Simon and Jude, which then fell on a Sunday, when the brothers as usual gathered for the meal, that brother deliberated with himself what he should do, since no will for food invited him to the dinner. At length, strengthened by better counsel, he chose for himself the best part; and so, while the convent refreshed itself, he, taking with him only his companions the psalms — in which he was ever wholly — went up into the church to pray; and approaching God’s saint he withdrew into the porch and poured forth prayers; sending an embassy, he begged the Lord to direct to him the things that are of peace and of salvation. But while he prayed there for some time, raising his eyes upward he saw the saint’s shrine uncovered at the front part, and the cloth with which it was covered waving unseemly and disordered this way and that. Indignant at these things — since he ministered more specially at the saint’s altar — gathering his strength into himself he raised himself wholly up and, with such effort as he could, mounted on a stool, he crept with difficulty onto the saint’s altar. But when he stood on the altar, his weakness begged for rest. At length, coming back to himself, with each hand he seized the holy martyr’s cloth and, joining his hands more strongly, raised and drew it, that it might more decently cover the saint’s shrine. But while with stronger effort he drew the raised cloth, from the very breath of the cloth let down there came forth an odour of wondrous sweetness which, entering him by mouth and nostrils, bedewed his whole body as though with dew — indeed, truly with dew, yet divine — and wondrously refreshed him; so that he neither recognised a sudden healing nor felt himself to be any longer sick. And fittingly enough did the intent of a good mind deserve to be endowed with such gifts, which, not trusting in man, in no wise made flesh its arm but hoped in the Lord who ceases not to work wonders in His saints. And while the Lord was his confidence, God had mercy on him, and for the merit of his good faith granted to His saint that the king should endow his sick soldier with speedy health for the wages of his service; yet in the subtlety of the mystery the change of the right hand of the Most High was worked subtly. And descending from the altar, unknowing of his new health, he resumed the psalms which he had left for the martyr’s service. For he had marked the place when he mounted the altar. But when he repeated them, he found himself between these two psalms: “How good is God to Israel” and “Why, O God” — that the brother, reflecting from the health received how good the God of Israel had been to him, might no longer say, as it were insistently: “Why, O God, have You cast off for ever” — my prayers namely for my health — knowing himself effectually heard through the martyr’s merits. So returning into himself, he called to mind that gospel word that ten were cleansed, and returning like the stranger gave thanks magnificently to God and His saint; and when he was thus made whole, no trouble of his former sickness saddened him further. But when after the brothers’ meal that brother refreshed himself, it seemed to him that whatever he ate that day had been prepared with that same wondrous odour. So, made the gladder by the exceeding fragrance of sweetness, taking food more eagerly he was much strengthened. At that same time the same brother was tormented by a heavier gout in the kidneys; and as it grew stronger he was present, though with difficulty, with the brothers at the supplication of the litany. And grieving, he begged the Lord and His saint, saying: “Saint Oswin, you have done well for me in restoring my former health; but it remains that you complete with a better end what you have well begun: from this threatening pain therefore free me, Lord.” He spoke; and with the brothers he prostrated himself with difficulty, presuming on the saint’s merits; and when the supplication was ended he arose and felt no traces of his former sickness in himself. Nor, as he afterwards protested, did that sickness sadden him in anything nor inflict any trouble. O physician conquered by the intent of a good mind alone, who for the service of such littleness lavishes the rewards of such goodness! In the year of the Lord’s Incarnation one thousand one hundred and eighty-four, this was done by the Lord and is marvellous in our eyes; for we can wonder at so sudden and swift a healing, but we cannot search out the nature and manner of the deed — since it is not ours to know the times or moments which the Father has set in His own power.

Chapter Forty-One: Of geese that could not eat corn stolen from his tithes by fraud. #

¹ We have also heard that another miracle happened in our times, which is both pleasant to relate and worthy of memory. For God, though He is great in great things, yet works glorious wonders in the least, that we may know that He does not forsake small things who created all from nothing. There was in Chirton a certain God-fearing man who rightly offered tithes of all he possessed; and he had a wife contrary to him in character, who neither feared God nor reverenced man. Now this man at harvest-time, when he had gathered his corn in the field in small heaps as is the custom of reapers, assigned the tithe-heap to Saint Oswin as his tithe, because his land belonged to the saint’s lordship; and the diligent husbandman carried home the remaining part of the corn that fell to him. Now his wife had very many geese, and one day drove them before her into the field to feed on the ears which the reapers’ hands had left; and she took one sheaf from the saint’s tithe and cast it before the geese, her husband not knowing. But they, as though noting and abhorring the crime, fled; and would neither look at the sheaf nor touch it in any way. The wife, indignant at this and that so great a portion of her corn had gone to tithe, moved with womanly gall, took up the sheaf of the tithe, drove the geese from the field and hastened home; and shut them in a small little hut and, casting the same sheaf among them, fastened the little door and departed. And she said: “Either you shall eat or you shall die.” And at these words she busied herself with her other affairs. But when the day was now declining the woman returned, wishing to know whether by hunger’s injury she had satisfied the anger of her mind; and opening the little door and meaning to enter, the geese ran cackling to meet her, as though begging food from their mistress as usual. Greatly amazed and looking more carefully at the sheaf, she found it not only untouched but not even in the trace of one ear did she find any hurt. For the shut-in geese hid their heads in their wings and sat in peace, awaiting their accustomed food as though no food had been set before them. But the woman, coming to herself, took the sheaf and cast another of her own lordship among them, which even while she stood by was consumed with the utmost speed and reduced to chaff by their swift voracity. Then for the first time the woman acknowledged that she had sinned; and when at night she had joined her husband in the privy chamber, she set forth the event of the thing in order and cried out, now penitent for the deed, that she had sinned against the saint of God. The husband, terrified at these things, rebuked his wife most bitterly in words and admonished her to show herself to the priest, set forth the matter in order, and expiate by priestly judgement what she had sinned against God and His saint. The woman did what her husband enjoined on the following Sunday: she went to the priest and went away justified from the church; and for the rest she amended what she had ill done.

Chapter Forty-Two: Of the prisoners at Newcastle who came out of prison by a vision and, coming to his church, were freed from the imminent death they had deserved. #

¹ There were at Newcastle certain guilty men bound in chains and to be condemned for their crimes, who daily awaited a miserable death by some kind of torment. Their feet were held in the stocks and by rings; their necks were bound with iron, their hands with bonds; and afflicted with hunger and famine they laboured under hunger and iron. So the face of the wretched was anxious, since weakness of body and the horror of the prison, the anguish of hunger and the weight of iron utterly denied them all hope of escape. So they sought aid from the Lord, since they had no confidence in man. And they dealt with that which they had heard of the Lord — that He often lightens punishments and restores forfeited rewards when He sees that one has well repented of sin. The wretches repented of their deed, they beg the powers above, they wet their faces with tears, such things they carry in mind: “O God! O mighty one! O bread and author of life! Deliver our bodies, loose our chains, lift our hunger.” Now on the night on which the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist is celebrated and kept, when they had scarcely given their wretched limbs to sickly sleep, one of them heard in a dream, as it seemed to him, a voice asking why they were held shut up there; and it added: “Do not fear — you shall not die now. For on the night of the translation of Saint Cuthbert, which is now soon to come, you shall be freed from your bonds. And when you see this come to pass, act manfully and let your heart be strengthened; and going out in haste from the prison, hasten to Tynemouth to the church of Saint Oswin, and give thanks to God and to him for your deliverance.” And at these words he fell silent. And he, awaking, told his companions what he had seen. And pressed by their straits, they confess that God can do all things; but whether He would will this, or even could, the wretches declare uncertain. For there were straits on every side, and they knew not what to believe. Yet from that day they had confidence in the Lord and invoked His saints Oswin and Cuthbert more intently. Now the day before the translation of the holy Confessor was at hand, it happened that the master of the prison went down to his prisoners to see what they were doing; and he found in the upper floor overhanging their heads a certain timber commonly called a plank, removed perhaps by chance from its order. Believing this had come by their craft or cunning, calling his companions he soon puts all to the torture, adds bonds to bonds, gives punishment upon punishment and beats their bodies with his fists. And going up from the prison, he swore he would not eat twice until he had first put them to death by hanging. So while he in vain plotted hanging, the benign God piously disposes of a reward. For the following night, in the first stillness of night, the bonds of certain of them were suddenly loosed; and they, at once trusting in the divine aid, helped one another: some unknotted others, some broke their bonds by such strength as they could with their hands; and now standing on their feet they were much troubled about their going out. And a hidden hole being opened more privately at the side of the prison, they all went out; and because a great part of their bonds clung to their feet and they could by no strength break it, they carried part in their hands while part clung to their bodies, lest if the iron should resound more loudly (as is the custom of rings) while they walked, their secret should be betrayed; and so the last error would be worse than the first — and then truly a worse error than before. There were two among them, one feeble, the other distrusting in the Lord; of whom the distrustful one believed he could not be saved by flight and, preferring by his own judgement to await death rather than anticipate it, returned to the prison — where afterwards found and condemned, he ended by hanging the life he could have saved. But his companions supported the feeble one as best they could and led him with them farther from the town; and they left him in the cemetery of a certain church, knowing that delay draws danger when safety is at stake: and going on they came with haste even to Tynemouth, where he too came the next day, creeping rather than walking, and was freed from the imminent trouble of death. So while the brothers were there singing matins, all these entered the church; and revealing the matter in order, they glorified God and, adoring the martyr, offered him their chains in place of a gift; which were hung in his presence for the continuance of his memory, that all who come together may know that blessed God gave this virtue and strength to His saint Oswin, that he should say to those who are bound, “Come out,” and to those who are in darkness, “Be revealed”; that He may unbar the closed and loose the bonds of the bound — all, I say, who call upon the Lord and His saint in truth. In the morning the king’s officers make inquiry where the prisoners had fled; and the rumour spreading, they learned they had come to Tynemouth. Running there at once, they found them there; and complaining more of the loss of the chains than of the chained men, they beset the ways out, as we ourselves saw, showing less reverence to the martyr’s peace than was fitting, so as to take them if perhaps they should resolve to flee. But because there is no counsel against the Lord, all went out one after another by night and there was none who knew; and one went to his town, another to his business. Learning this, the king’s officers and ministers returned striking their breasts. They too ascribed it to miracle and, giving honour to God and asking pardon for the injury done to the martyr’s peace, all returned home. Now there are many things which work much for us to make the miracle, since they rest on a probable argument of truth — namely the condition of the time and the site of the place, the difficulty of the journey, the weight of iron, the swift issue of the affair; all of which, had they lacked divine aid, the matter could in no way have merited such an end. For the season was mild autumn and the air’s grateful temper, and the moon’s brightness was excessive, and very many were keeping night-watches over their crops; the prison’s site set on the height of the town, six miles from Tynemouth; the path they took confused with jutting stones and uneven closeness of rocks; they themselves feeble in going and laden with iron bonds; the town’s exit on that side beset on every hand with the inhabitants’ houses! And yet in all these things they were neither seen nor heard by anyone; indeed, wondrous to relate, though they were so many they were not even followed by dogs — so that it was openly given to understand that their leader the Lord, to the praise of His martyr, hid them in the hiding-place of His face from the troubling not only of men but also of animals; and that a later generation may know that He alone is God working wonders, who wondrously glorifies His saints in life and after the passing of the flesh makes them known to live thus in miracles.

Chapter Forty-Three: Of a woman crippled for five years and freed in the martyr’s presence through his merits. #

¹ There was in the town of Tynemouth a certain woman named Aldit, contracted in all her sinews for nearly five continuous years; who, lying in bed, utterly lacked the use of her feet: and set in infirmity she continually begged the aid of God and of the holy martyr Oswin. One day this woman, for want of things and of food, coming to herself and presuming on the saint’s merits and conquering the sickness of her mind by virtue, did violence to herself; and leaning on a staff with such effort as she could, seemed rather to creep than to walk. And so she hastened to the holy martyr’s church and there with tears and prayers implored God’s grace and the martyr’s aid for the relieving of her sickness. And as she did this frequently, it happened that on the feast of Saint Peter which is called Ad Vincula, that same woman in the martyr’s presence was intent on prayer with accustomed earnestness; and while the divine office was being celebrated in the convent, she arose restored to the health she desired; and leaving her staff in our sight as witness of the health received, she who had come creeping and sad returned walking and joyful to her own — her saint himself honouring her with such marks, who is God blessed for ever. Amen.

Chapter Forty-Four: Of a girl vexed by a demon and freed through Saint Oswin. #

¹ A certain girl of Northsetune was vexed by an atrocious demon, and tore with nails and teeth whoever she could reach. Her parents, presuming on the saint’s merits, brought her into the martyr’s presence; and passing the night there with her in prayer, they obtained through the saint’s merits the desired benefit of health and joyfully led the girl back unharmed to their own. Which miracle, famously worked and solemnly and publicly recited in the church before the people, we have taken care to commit to letters; that a later generation may know that God ceases not to honour His saint with such marks, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

Chapter Forty-Five: Of a certain thief. #

¹ In the time when Prior Archarius presided over the church of Tynemouth — a man of honest life, distinguished in birth, mature in years and in manners — God manifested His ancient miracles to the honour and glory of His most holy king and martyr Oswin. And He manifested them thus. A certain free-born goldsmith named Baldwin, most skilled in the knowledge of any metal, made a little stay in the service of the same prior, that he might clothe with silver and gold more decently than before the casket in which the holy martyr’s body is laid up. Now on Saint Oswin’s day, when the people gathered as usual for the feast, certain of them worshipped the martyr humbly with offerings and devout prayers; others, refreshed with richer feasts, gave themselves to games and sports. But when Baldwin heard the voices and tumults of the players, he ran hastily to the spectacle and left the little door of his workshop less cautiously open. Meanwhile a certain thief secretly approached the said workman’s workshop, which adjoined the martyr’s church; and entering, he gathered all the substance he could carry, seized it and secretly departed. And because he violated with rash daring the martyr’s peace, which has profited many to life, he at once felt in himself a vengeance worthy of his deeds. For though the public way lay open to him as he went and nothing at all seemed that could by human reason hinder a traveller’s course, he could in no wise pass the bounds of the peace; but wandered to and fro within the limits of the peace. At length, betaking himself into a certain little lodging of the town, he made darkness his hiding-place; where by the brightness of his face, the inconstancy of his words and the strangeness of the things he carried, he made himself suspect to those who looked on him; and so they who sat there kept watch over him until something more certain about him should come to their hearing. And it happened at once. For there was in the same house a certain woman who washed Baldwin’s clothes as usual; she discovered by manifest signs, on inspection of the breeches, that the thief was clothed in Baldwin’s garments; and at once reported all she had seen to Baldwin. When the goldsmith heard these things and understood that his substance had been carried off — not so much for the loss of goods, not so much for the wrong done as for the martyr’s church — he burst forth into such words, saying: “O king and most holy martyr, from how very many have I learned by your fame spreading abroad that you are accustomed to convict the violators of your peace, to chastise the wicked and often to amend sinners! Why have you permitted so great an injury to your peace, why this loss to me who am specially deputed to your service? If the things I have heard of you, martyr, are true, let me see your vengeance in this work, I pray; for to you I have revealed my cause, reverend martyr.” While the petitioner’s prayer was still turning in his heart, the rumour sounded more fully that the same thief had been caught in the town and had brought back whole what he had taken. Hearing this, Baldwin, taking his companions, ran hastening there; and sentence being given, they hanged the thief — publicly convicted and confessed — on the gallows, doing to him as he had ill done against God and his neighbour. And so Baldwin, having received back all he had lost, giving thanks to God and the holy martyr, returned joyfully to his own: and afterwards he strove to work more subtly on the martyr’s casket and to be found the more devoted in his service.